#(i continue saying things until i fade away completely into a pile of dust)

[verflares]

lying face down on the floor. there are so many things to draw always. that is so crazy

[sammy-is-not-smiley]

Replacement (Part 1/2)

Steve Harrington x fem!reader

S4 SPOILER FREE

Summary: After coming across Steve and Dustin on the railroad tracks, you ended up accidently going through hell with them fighting demodogs and helping the Byers at their house. Now, you were tasked with keeping the kids safe at the house with Steve. The only thing is you assumed you were keeping them safe from interdimensional monsters... not Billy Hargrove. 

Word count: 4.1k

Warnings/tags: Fist fight, anxiety, gross non-con kiss, creepy Billy, hurt but not much comfort yet

A/N: This one starts a little boring but gets interesting towards the end lol. If I missed any possible trigger warnings please feel free to let me know! I’m still learning how to properly put them. I want to be able to give proper warning for those who need it. Part 2 will be available immediately :)

Read Part 2

Pondering over the night once again, you stared in the mirror, face dripping with cold water. Just the day before, the thing you were most worried about was your upcoming math final. Now, that final was a fading blip in the back of your mind. The night had consisted of fighting dog-like beasts with Steve Harrington, hiking in the woods with a nerdy group of middle schoolers, and meeting a little girl with superpowers who saved your life right before your eyes. To say nothing felt right was an understatement. 

A majority of the group that had been at the Byers’s minutes before had just left to carry out a plan you barely could keep up with. They all seemed to know what they were talking about though, and that was enough for you. In the end, you and Steve were left to keep the kids at the house and keep them safe while everyone else went to their separate missions. Considering the exhaustion you felt from the events of the evening, you were more than happy to be a co-babysitter. 

With a heavy sigh, you wiped your face with a clean towel and exited the Byers’ bathroom. As you did, a crashing erupted from the kitchen.

“All right,” You heard Dustin say. “It should fit now.”

You cautiously turned the corner to see the dead Demodog from the living room wrapped in a quilt in Steve’s arms. Dustin stood in front of a completely empty fridge, metal racks and bottles of condiments littering the floor next to him in a messy pile.

“Is this really necessary?” Steve asked in labored breaths. He noticed you as you entered the kitchen and looked at you with pleading eyes.

You rolled your eyes and fought a smile at Steve’s inability to say no to Dustin. “Dust, what are you putting him through now?”

“I’m preserving science,” Dustin replied sternly. “This is a groundbreaking scientific discovery! We can’t just bury this like some common mammal, okay? It’s not a dog,” He said to both you and Steve.

You and the taller boy glanced at each other, thinking the same thing. You looked back at Dustin, “Dude…. Demo-dog.”

Dustin rolled his eyes. “I call it that because it sounds badass, not because it’s scientifically accurate! It looks like a dog but it probably isn’t part canine.”

Steve groaned loudly, patience fraying, and started approaching the empty fridge. “Whatever Dust, you’re explaining this to Mrs. Byers,” He stressed.

He attempted to stuff the creature into the fridge but very obviously struggled, making you smirk. Your eyes trailed over and you caught yourself having to pull your eyes away from his jawline and neck as it flexed.

Now? Really? You shook your head as you chastised yourself. This is where being exhausted gets you.

The fridge shook as the head of the Demodog smacked against it. “Agh, help me out,” Steve grunted at Dustin. 

“What am I supposed to do?”

“Get the door or something!” Steve’s head turned and he pleaded your name. “Help.”

You scoffed and put your hands up, shaking your head. “Not my circus, not my monkeys. I’m not touching that thing.”

Groaning in response, Steve continued his struggle until finally, the fridge door could be slammed shut. You could hear the clang of glass bottles inside and the two boys let out a huff as you turned and began walking into the living room to get a subtle head count of the other kids.

Lucas and Max swept up the shattered glass from the window Eleven had thrown the Demodog through. Mike paced back and forth nervously, not paying any mind to you or the other two.

“Mike!” Lucas snapped suddenly, making you jump as you walk in. “Would you just stop?”

“You weren’t in there, okay, Lucas? That lab is swarming with hundreds of those dogs,” Mike snapped back with just as much bite. It was obvious he was worried sick for El.

“The chief will take care of her,” Lucas weakly tried to reassure, an air of annoyance in his tone. You admitted to yourself you were a bit annoyed with Mike too. He’d been nothing but pissy the whole night.

Max quietly scoffed. “Like she needs protection…”

Your shoulders sagged at the children's lame attempts to try and put Mike at ease. He might be irritable, but those kinds of responses wouldn’t pull him down from it. You took a step towards Mike. “Max is kind of right. I mean, you saw what she did to that…. Demodog,” You hesitated, the word still foreign on your tongue. “She threw it through the window with her mind. I think she might be able to handle a few more dogs.”

“You weren’t there either!” Mike practically barked your name. “This isn’t just ten or fifteen of those dogs, it’s hundreds. What’s this to you anyway? Why are you here?”

You felt a flame of anger burst into your chest. This was the first you had talked to him that night and you weren’t going to stand him shoving that attitude onto you. You thought Hopper had put this kid in his place before they left, but apparently not. “I don’t know, maybe because I want to help while it feels like the world is suddenly falling apart? News flash, Michael, I am as scared to death as you are. Don’t put us below you because you think none of us understand,” You fumed at him a little louder than intended. You really couldn’t regulate your own emotions while exhausted.

“Hey, hey, hey,” Steve interjected between you and Mike, a dish towel in one hand as he lifted both hands up. “Time out you two.”

You both rolled your eyes, turning in opposite directions. Mike really wasn’t worth the little energy you had left.

“Listen, dude,” Steve directed toward Mike. “Tone it down a bit. If the coach calls a play in the game, bottom line, you execute it. All right?”

Mike turned to Steve, a newfound rage in his eyes. “Okay, first of all, this isn’t some stupid sports game, and second, we aren't even in the game. We’re on the bench.”

Steve nodded as he wiped his hands on the dish towel. “Right, so my point is… Yeah, we’re on the bench so uh… There’s nothing we can do.” He concluded and threw the dish towel back and over his shoulder.

“That’s not entirely true,” Dustin argued. “I mean, these Demodogs have a hive mind. When they ran away from the bus they were called away.”

Lucas leaned against a broomstick. “So if we get their attention…”

“Maybe we can draw them away from the lab,” Max said.

“And clear a path to the gate,” Mike finished.

Steve folded his arms over his torso. “Yeah, and then we all die.”

“Or not,” You piped up. If you didn’t know any better you would think these kids had a hive mind too. Their plan was thought up quickly but it sounded about right as far as you could tell. And with Mike’s mood making yours go sour, going out and doing something useful didn’t sound half bad. Otherwise, you might end up beating a child whos name starts with an ‘M’.

“Really?” Steve's shoulders sagged at you. “You’re the one supposed to be on my side here!”

You shrugged and gave an insincere apologetic expression. “Steve, as much as it annoys me to say this at the moment, Mike is right. This isn’t a sports game, there are no rules. And I’m pretty sure the opponent plays dirty anyway.”

Steve put his hand up to his face to shield it from the kids and mouthed a dramatic ‘ fucking stop it’. All you did was innocently smile in response. 

“I got it!” Mike exclaimed and ran past you into the kitchen. He squat down and pointed to a spot on a drawn vine put together by papers on the fridge. “This is where the chief dug his hole. This is our way into the tunnel. So…” He stood and ran to another area. A larger one where all the pages of drawn vines led to. “Right here, this is like a hub. You got all the tunnels feeding in here. So, maybe if we set this on fire--”

“Oh yeah, that’s a no,” Steve shot down immediately.

“The Mind Flayer would call away its army,” Dustin followed Mike’s thought process, ignoring Steve.

Lucas grinned widely. “They’d all come to stop us!”

“Guys--” Steve tried to interrupt. 

“Yeah, and then we circle back to the exit,” Mike continued. “By the time they realize we’re gone--”

“El would be at the gate!” Max followed as well.

“Wait, all this is a real map?... Are you sure we could make it out before they get there?” You asked, reminded that once again you were missing details of the situation.

“Hey! Hey! Hey!” Steve hollered as he clapped his hands to get everyone’s attention. “This is not happening! I promised to keep you shitheads safe, and that’s exactly what I plan on doing. Especially you,” He jabbed a finger at you, making your eyes widen and your heart jolt. “‘Cause with all due respect, you aren’t supposed to be in this mess in the first place.” He looked back to the children. “We’re staying here, on the bench, and we’re waiting for the starting team to do their job. Does everybody understand?” Steve lectured as he put his hands on his hips. 

“This isn’t some stupid sports game!” Mike reiterated himself.

“I said does everybody understand that?... I need a yes,” Steve finished in expectancy.

A moment of silence fell on the room.

“We would have to be quick,” You broke it, looking down at the hub all the vines led to. A hint of guilt directed at Steve sat in your stomach at ignoring him… But the more you thought about it the more you were on the kid's side. It wasn’t your fault Steve felt responsible for your wellbeing. Plus, you were pretty sure the kids would follow through on their plan whether you and Steve supported it anyway. 

Steve yelled out your name. “What the hell?” He snapped. “We’re not doing this!” He gestured his hands out.

You sympathetically look back to meet his brown eyes, which once again were pleading with you to help him out here. 

You ran a hand through your hair in exasperation. Walking up to him you sternly held eye contact with him. “The other team doesn’t play fair, so why should we?” You repeated yourself in nearly a whisper. “I think all hands on deck might be necessary for this one.”

Just as it looked like he was wavering and about to break, the roar of a car engine revved from the driveway. Headlights blared through the front living room window. 

Max’s eyes went round in recognition and she ran to the window, looking out to confirm who had arrived.

“It’s my brother. He can’t know I’m here,” She looked at Lucas at her side, who had followed her suit. “He’ll kill me… he’ll kill us,” She said shakily. 

“This is the WORST TIMING.” You mumbled, looking back at Steve for his reaction. He had turned toward the door, his face suddenly plastered with a newfound determination. 

You knew Billy, or at least as well as you could being in the same grade as him. He was also someone who played dirty, you saw that clearly from watching him on the basketball court.

Steve suddenly slapped his dish towel to the ground and strode over to the door. He walked out and closed it behind him as you watched with wide eyes. 

“What’s he doing!?” Max hissed, looking back toward you.

You put a hand to your face and drug it down your cheek as nerves made your stomach knot. “Keeping us shitheads safe?...”

The kids took up all the space around the window, leaving you to stand to the side and rely on them for info. “What’s happening?” You asked in a hushed tone. You sat and watched the beams of light, hoping to see them turn away and disappear. However, they remained.

“They’re just talking,” Lucas replied, staring intently out the window.

“I don’t think it’ll stay that way for long,” Max speculated, shaking her head slightly.

You shook your head. “I don’t think so either.”

Suddenly the three younger kids ducked down below the window and onto the couch.

“Shit, shit, shit!” Dustin swore. 

“What!?”

“He saw us in the window! I didn’t think he would be able to see us, ah shit!” 

“He knows I’m here,” Max professed, eyes wild and panicked.

“Oh my god, okay, off the couch!” You commanded, practically yanking them by the arms and pulling them back toward the hallway. “Do you think he’ll try to get inside?” You tried to ask Max, but before you could get an answer the door swung open and slammed back against the wall.

You whirled around to the doorway to see a shadow standing in the frame that definitely wasn’t Steve. 

“Quite the party in here, huh?” Billy boasted and slammed the door behind him. On instinct, you put your arms out protectively in front of the kids. However, Billy looked right past you as if you weren’t even there. 

Where the hell did Steve go?

“Lucas Sinclair, what a surprise,” Billy said, attempting to advance toward the boy.

You stepped forward and came between the two. “Billy, get out of here,” You warned in as stern and protective a voice you could muster. You were surprised, though, at how bold you managed to sound.

Billy scoffed dramatically. “You know (y/n), I’ve never known you to be the excitable type,” He said smugly, finally acknowledging your existence in the room.

“You don’t know me,” You seethed back at him, trying to maintain the painful eye contact. “Just leave. Leave us all alone.”

He rolled his eyes and took a puff of his cigarette, tossing it to the floor. He shifted his gaze to Max. “I thought I told you to stay away from that loser, Max,” He grumbled, glaring at Lucas.”And the rest of them while you’re at it.” He glared at you like you were chopped liver. Your eye contact faltered slightly under his gaze.

Max drilled a fiery stare at her stepbrother. “Billy, go away.”

“You disobeyed me,” He continued. “And you know what happens when you disobey me.”

Your hands tightened into fists at his tone.

WHERE IS STEVE?

“I break things.” Billy barely finished the sentence when he shoved you out of the way and lunged at Lucas.

The motion taking you by surprise, you stumbled over your own feet and smacked your head on the ground, landing hard on the floor. The house around you visually shifted and you tried to regain your senses as Billy picked Lucas up by his jacket over you. He swiftly carried him into the kitchen and slammed Lucas’s smaller body into a shelf with a crash. In a panic, you attempted to grope around you for something. You guessed you were looking for some sort of weapon.

If Steve wasn’t here, then it was up to you to protect these kids, even if it wasn’t from monsters from another dimension. Billy was enough of a beast as it was.

“Since Maxine won’t listen to me, maybe you will,” Billy growled at Lucas. “You stay away from her. Stay away from her! You hear me?”

Suddenly a new figure burst through the front door. Steve’s eyes fell to see you on the floor, disoriented, as Billy’s yells echoed from the kitchen. He stared at you, then at the frightened children trying to help you up, and his eyes blazed with anger.

“Get off me!” Lucas yelled and kicked Billy, causing him to groan and release his grip on the boy.

“You’re so dead Sinclair! You’re dead!”

Steve turned the corner into the kitchen with purpose and spun Billy around by the shoulder. “No, you are.” His fist collided with Billy’s face.

“No, no, no, no,” You muttered under your breath as you finally stood, Dustin and Max’s grip still on your arms. After the first punch, you knew exactly where this was headed. It couldn’t end well, not with Billy.

A lump formed in your throat when instead of groaning or responding in anger, Billy began maniacally giggling like a clown. “Looks like you got some fire in you after all, huh?” He digressed at Steve. “I’ve been waiting to meet this ‘King Steve’ everybody’s been telling me so much about.”

“Get out,” Steve replied sternly.

Billy stared at him a moment, meanwhile, you hoped whatever fire that had been lit beneath the two had diffused. You shook off the children’s grasp and just when you thought it was over, the fire raged again and Billy took a swing at Steve. He ducked, causing Billy to strike the air, giving Steve the opportunity to punch once more. Again and again, Steve pivoted successful blows as the kids began to yell and cheered him on.

All you could do was stand silent with a pounding heart and frozen body, not exactly sure what to do. You’ve never intervened in a fight before, let alone been in one. You fought dog monsters just hours earlier, why couldn’t you get your feet to move and help Steve now?

Just protect the kids. 

You corralled Lucas back over to you, putting him behind you once again. Looking back at the fight, you began to feel hope rise in your chest when Steve looked to be handling the still laughing lunatic pretty well.

Until he wasn’t.

Billy took hold of a plate and bashed it against Steve’s head, shattering the plate to pieces. He then took Steve’s moment of weakness and progressed toward him, throwing punches equal to what he had received from the other teen. 

You pushed the kids back as the two moved their conflict past you and into the living room. Billy clutched Steve’s jacket and the two locked eyes.

“No one tells me what to do,” He grossly sneered, then pushed Steve across the room with terrifying strength.

Billy then got down and pounded Steve’s face relentlessly into the floor with his fists, to the point where Steve’s face was an unrecognizable bloody mess. With each hit you found yourself flinching.

You stared at Billy in horror as tears began to sting your eyes. Then your eyes met Steve, who no longer looked conscious. Something snapped inside of you at that moment and a flood of pure rage ran through your being, exploding from your chest. Your hands were squeezing into fists again, your nails digging into your palms, and you strode over to Billy. Roughly, you gripped a clump of his hair and yanked him back from Steve’s limp body. 

Billy landed on his back at your feet and stared up at you. The children’s yelling suddenly ceased. Your eyes widened at the realization of what you had done and you took a step back. Bringing your hand up from your side, you clearly saw a wad of Billy’s crusty, curly mullet woven in your fingers.

A smirk began growing on his face as Billy observed the fear washing over yours. He laughed wildly again. “Very unexpected,” He said with a grunt as he slowly stood up. “So, what, are you, Harrington’s pet now?”

You let the hair in your hand fall to the floor. “... Huh?”

Billy began walking toward you in deliberate menacing steps. “You know, a little bird told me you’re just a lonely pervert. A little perv who likes to watch us guys on the court.” He took another step closer.

While you couldn’t properly voice it in the moment, you didn’t go to basketball practice at school to site see. You always went to meet with your math tutor. But of course, Billy would twist it like that…

You could feel the tingling behind your nose of tears beginning to well. Desperately, you fought the feeling. “That’s…” Your mind went blank as you backed away from the taller boy. You fumbled around in your mind for a good comeback or even just a name to call Billy, but nothing came of it. Humiliation quickly took a firm hold on you.

He laughed again, a disgusting, prideful laugh. “Oh, come on, it’s all true isn’t it?” He bellowed. “And I bet the only reason Stevie’s with you is because no one else will give you the time of day. Am I right?” He smiled wickedly. “He’s gone mushy.”

“We’re not together,” You barely said audibly. Of all things, your tired brain chose that to say. The rage that had flooded your system only a minute before was long gone and you struggled to find it again. 

You continued to step back away from him only hit a wall, halting you in your tracks. Billy took a step closer and slammed both hands up on the wall on either side of your head, trapping you. You aren’t much shorter than him, but at that moment he seemed to tower feet over you. Although you suddenly refused to make eye contact while he was that close, you could still smell cigarettes in each hot breath he exhaled. Hot and sweaty breaths that made you want to gag.

“What was that, babydoll?” He asked in a low brusque tone that masked his thunder. It made goosebumps erupt over your skin… And not in a good way.

You inhaled shakily and grimaced, trying not to choke on the foul stench of his breath. “Don’t call me that. I said… we’re not together. You need to leave.” Your chest felt tight and you squeezed your hands into fists again, not out of anger but in fear.

“Oh, really? You two aren’t an item? Well, I guess it’s okay if I do this, then.” 

Your eyes widened as you felt his lips forcefully press onto yours. Immediately, you put your hands on his chest, trying to push away only to be met with the wall on your back. He brought his hands up and held your head with a painful grip on the sides, fingers pulling your hair at the roots. His grip was too strong and, in panic, you began hitting his chest with your closed fists.

The smell and taste of smoke was overwhelming as Billy forced his slimy tongue past your lips and into your mouth. Salty sweat and a hint of metallic blood made its way off his upper lip and into the kiss, causing you to finally gag. You started to dig your nails into his bare arms, desperately trying to make him pull away as you weren’t able to. 

Abruptly, he pulled away and put his hand to his neck as something stuck out of it. You didn’t even try to see what happened, instead, you crumbled to the floor in defeat. Earnestly you wiped at your mouth with your hoodie sleeve, squeezing your eyes shut, trying to will away what had just happened. Your body jerked and convulsed in tremors and you could feel the hot tears finally flowing down your face.

Suddenly, a rough thud rattled the floor in front of you, causing you to jolt and look up. Your watery eyes were met with Billy laying there, barely conscious, yet still horrifically chuckling to himself.

“From here on out, you leave me and my friends alone. Do you understand?” Max warned Billy as she held Steve’s spiked bat over him threateningly.

“Screw you,” He mumbled.

Max swung the bat down onto the wood floor between his legs, making your body jolt. “Say you understand! Say it… Say it!” She screamed.

“I understand.”

“What?” Max pressed.

“I understand,” Billy grunted, then quietly went limp and passed out.

Max let out a breath as she dropped the bat to her side, once again making you jump. She turned and looked at you, still sitting on the floor with shiny streaks of tears streaming steadily down your face. Your head was turned toward Billy, but you wouldn’t look at him.

“Oh god,” Max lamented your name. “I’m so sorry, so so sorry,” She knelt down next to you, wrapping her arms around your broken body.

You simply let your head fall back into her arms, closing your eyes. Shame flooded your chest as you realized the kids had been there and saw the whole thing. Your tears quickly soaked the girl’s green jacket, but you paid no mind. You heard footsteps next to you, then the soft embrace of more arms. As you sat in the fetal position on the floor, the children embraced you in a shield of themselves. Their body warmth radiated safety, a concept you were struggling to hold onto in the moment.

“I- It’s not you- your fault,” You finally managed to hiccup. 

[allteacher]

also on ao3

Eris has been in the Tower for barely three weeks when she gets the message.

It should come as more of a surprise, but Eris has known since she crawled gasping out of the Moon’s tunnels that she would not have peace for long, even in the Tower. Even after she’d been discovered and inspected and questioned, spoken softly to and coddled and ensconced gently in her own private quarters— quarters in the civilian wing, far away from her old rooms.

“All your things are still in storage,” Ikora had told her that first day, watching Eris look around her new bedroom, empty save the large windows looking down on the memorial gardens. The view is of the Firebreak section; Eris had refused anything where she could see the names of the people she’d known, where the City planners had just yesterday taken down the stone inscribed with her own name.

She still hasn’t retrieved any of her things, the ragged cloaks or the blankets or the chipped mugs she’d stolen from the Hunter’s Lounge. She thinks about going into that dark room filled with the markers of her past life, sometimes. Sometimes she thinks she will open the heavy metal door and her old self will be standing there, surrounded by the past. Sometimes this is a dream; more often it is a nightmare.

Every few days, Eris sneaks into the supply closet at the end of the hallway and takes one of the chain locks from its carefully-labeled container. She installs them carefully, tests her weight against the door to see if it gives: fragile charms against some future ruin. She knows anything she is truly afraid of could not be stopped by something so mortal, but the action gives her hands something to do; material action, however useless, in service of her own protection.

(She’d done the same on the Moon, before they’d ventured down into the pit: the six of them, holed up in some small lunar colony outbuilding, she and Vell nailing sheets of spinmetal to the doors to keep out wandering Hive in the night. The chalk of bone dust in her throat as Toland had hung Hive-charms over each threshold, humming to himself.

Sai had looked at him, grin questioning. “Are those going to blow us up?”

Eris knows now they would’ve done much worse.)

She hauls herself to her feet, examines her handiwork. If Ikora saw her, she’d call Eris obsessive. Eris knows she is; she wants something new to obsess over. Wants to think of nothing but Crota, to dream of nothing else until his great luminescent corpse is rotting in his Throne. This is why, when her comm chimes with the one-two tone of a summons, she turns toward it with an eager expectation. Maybe Ikora has convinced the Vanguard to listen to her, finally.

The message is from a channel she’s never seen, not before she entered the Hellmouth or since. There’s no text, just a string of coordinates and, at the bottom, a series of pictographs. They’re not Hive runes, have none of the sinuous incomprehensibility.

Eris, the habit worn into her, has her suspicions. But she speaks of them to no one, has the feeling she’s guessed the importance of the secret she’s been entrusted with.

The message has no date attached, so she waits a few more days before acting. She spends that time in a stupor, drifting around her little room, sometimes venturing to the library or to the secluded back hallways of the Hidden to ask for information. She still keeps to the shadows, because no one in the City or the Tower has grown used to her presence yet. Idly, she considers the idea that she is making her problem worse, only alienating herself further by refusing to come fully into the light, to let herself be seen. In these in-between days, she cannot bring herself to care.

She considers leaving without telling anyone. She does not think she will be gone long, and she does not need permission to leave the City. But she considers what the Vanguard, already suspicious of her, would think, what conclusions they would draw. What Ikora would think if Eris disappeared into the night, like she’d done with Eriana so many years ago.

Finally, she sneaks into Ikora’s office.

Eris wastes no time on formalities once she sees Ikora's figure behind her desk, piled high with reports. "I am leaving the City for the afternoon," she says. It is not a lie, because she is loathe to hide anything but what she must from the one person who has tried to welcome her back into the City, who still sees her as an equal. "I am not going off-world. I should be back before tomorrow." The words feel stiff in her mouth even as she says them, but she is still relearning conversations not conducted in whispers or screams.

Ikora does not beam at her, does not over-indulge her, but Eris can still feel the warmth of her Light radiating outward. “Alright," she says, "Radio if you need any assistance. And let me know if you see anything unusual. I’ve been receiving strange reports, lately.”

Eris hopes that isn’t a warning. She inclines her head, leaves without a word.

She departs immediately, before her paranoia can get the better of her. She flies over the Cosmodrome for half an hour before inputting the coordinates she’d long since memorized— some Hidden practicality had made her delete the message almost as soon as she’d read it. She comes to the location soon enough, a little clearing tucked into some foothills. Still on Earth, which she privately considers a blessing. She does not know if she would have been able to leave it, yet, not when her wounds are still so raw.

Eris parks her little ship in the shadow of a few trees. She feels secure having it a physical presence near her, a concrete mode of retreat. It’s more than she’d ever had in the tunnels.

She picks her way across a stream, climbs to the top of a small hill that rises over the clearing. She sees the figure immediately, cutting a striking figure against the weak afternoon light. Even from here, he hurts her eyes to look at. She grimaces, continues down towards him.

As she grows closer, the figure grows more obvious: Osiris. She’d had her suspicions, driven by what she’d remembered of his writings before his exile, Toland’s ravings. Even the message had a certain Warlock quality to it, a mystery, a challenge. She and Eriana had crafted just such a message with their own hands once, join us in our quest…

Osiris looks as she remembers him, though she’d only ever seen him from a distance. Eriana had disliked him, had hated his presence as Warlock Vanguard. Despised his position because of the power it gave him over the Praxic Fire, who stood in clear opposition to everything he'd gradually become.

(“I don’t see why he��s so desperate to understand them. I’m tired of trying to simply understand,” Eriana had groaned once, servos whirring, bent over some ancient tome. “I do not need to know the Hive to raze them to ashes. I only need to know what they have taken from us.”)

Forgive me, Eris thinks. She will not get her vengeance without fully comprehending everything the Hive are, without learning the weft and weave of their existence so that she can unravel it.

She blinks and she is standing before him. “Osiris,” she says. Maybe it is her memories of Eriana but she feels like a newly-Risen, again, standing before him. He is a figure cut neatly from her past and transplanted into the present, unchanging, looking down at her.

“Eris Morn,” he says, and Eris does not startle but she is, for some reason, surprised that he knows just who she is. She knows that it is her own tortuous journey that has made him seek her out, that it is her pain that has made her valuable. Some part of her rails against it, even as she is desperate to turn her nightmares into something usable, to prove to herself that their deaths were not meaningless, that they have done something other than feed the Hive’s ever-eager desire for suffering.

Osiris is looking at her strangely. Eris tries to stare back, but her eyes skitter sideways off of him, the afterimage of his silhouette burning in her eyes. She must make another face, because Osiris’ Ghost slides close to him, spinning intently, and the aura of his Light fades to a shimmer over his skin.

“I know you have information regarding the Hive,” he tells her. “The City ignores your warnings.”

“As they ignored yours.” It is not meant as a challenge, but everything she says sounds bitter, now.

Most of his face is covered, but the tilt of his head changes. “Yes. But we both know what is coming. The question is how to stop it.”

Eris has never been good at these Warlock-games, at talking in circles, hinting closer and closer to what lies plain before them both. “I think I know how to kill Crota,” she says, because she needs to get to the heart of the thing that has been eating her alive. She needs to tell someone who will understand.

And she thinks Osiris will understand, because he has not been through the Hellmouth but he does understand what it is like to exist utterly alone with the enemy, to be shaped by your experience of something completely alien. To be so utterly changed that everyone around you can only think you mad.

“Tell me, then,” he says, and so she does.

[clefairymuke]

regrets | chapter three

prev. chapter | next chapter

pairings: levi ackerman x reader / eren jaeger x reader

themes: enemies to lovers, slowburn, angst, fluff, smut

tw: violence / explicit sexual content

word count: 1760

Levi's words had undeniably left you a bit shaken; this contributed to the pit in your stomach when you approached his door for the second time that day. Something about the way he glared at you -- so angry yet calm, terrifying yet serene -- had been the frontmost thing in your mind all day. His eyes cut straight through you in a way that you had never experienced. You nearly shivered as you raised your hand to knock on the door. You knocked twice and stood back, waiting for him to say, "Come in."

He didn't, though. He opened the door within moments, like he had been waiting. He looked different now. He was not wearing his typical uniform and cravat combo, which you thought made him look like a dunce anyways. He was dressed in a simple grey long-sleeve shirt and brown pants. On his feet were a pair of white socks. When your eyes came to his face, you noticed that his hair was a bit messy. If he wasn't such a pain in your ass, he might have been somewhat attractive.

"Are you going to keep staring, or are you going to say something?" he asked, breaking you from your unknowing trance of studying him. And with that, all of your musing about him disappeared and he was back to being the bane of your existence.

"I was just trying to figure out how you managed to pull that stupid tie from around your neck without having a conniption. I thought you probably showered in it," you told him as he stood back to let you in. The room was as you left it last, completely tidy.

"How did you make it this far being this disrespectful?"

"A lot of determination. So what exactly am I to clean?" You looked around searching for even a speck of dust. None was to be found.

He scoffed at you. "Do you honestly think I sleep, cook, and shower at this very desk? Believe it or not, I function pretty similarly to the average human being. I did say you would be cleaning the entire suite."

"Okay, asshole. You don't have to make me feel like an idiot." You felt the blood rushing to your cheeks and tried desperately to fight it off, if such a thing was possible.

"It's easier because you truly are one."

"An idiot?"

"That is what I said. Do you have hearing problems, brat?" He combed a piece of hair out of his face as you huffed. "Can you just get to cleaning and get the fuck out of my hair? If you would just be obedient and stop doing stupid shit, we'd never have to be in this situation again."

"If you would've minded your own business and let us have a little extra food, we wouldn't have to be anywhere near each other, either!" You threw your hands up in an overly exaggerated shrug. Messing with Levi was no longer fun. It was utterly infuriating. "What do you care if I'm a little disobedient? How does it affect you, Levi?"

"For the last time, you will refer to me as your Captain. And that is exactly why it matters to me. You will not ignore my authority. I will have your respect, feigned or otherwise." He was glaring at you again, the same look in his eyes from earlier. You tried to match his intensity as you scraped the bottom of your soul for as much courage as you could muster.

"What have you done to make me respect you, Levi? It isn't like you respect me. Or anybody. You don't watch your words for anyone, what makes you think you deserve for me to watch mine because of a stupid title?" You were absolutely fuming with rage towards the man in front of you. His muscles were tense and his jaw was clenched tightly. You wondered if you had seen Levi angry now. Would he be able to make the same threatening comment after this interaction?

Within a second, he had you frozen. He said your name roughly, almost as a growl, and was now so close the ends of his hair brushed your cheeks. "You will not speak to me this way. Continue to treat your superiors as peers. You won't make it past the first mission. Do not become a casualty over a stupid fucking complex." You were sure he was angry now. Your blood was running cold against your will. "Stop looking for attention. If you keep going down this path, the most you will get is at your funeral in the very near future."

For the first time, you had no snark reply to his rage-inducing words. All you truly wanted to do was hit him. It was nearly impossible not to. Your fists were so harshly clenched you could feel the crescent-shaped wounds forming on your palms. All you could form a coherent thought to say was, "Fuck you, Levi."

He backed up, likely for your safety. His hand rose to grip his hair as he exhaled slowly. "Get the hell out. I can't stand to look at you. Forget your punishment. You cannot fix blatant stupidity."

You accepted his invitation and stormed towards the door, Levi following closely behind. he reached in front of you and practically tore the door off of the wall, slamming it as soon as your feet planted in the hallway.

You wanted to scream.

---

You sat in a pile of hay at the stables, still filled with anger. You had no way to release it except pressing your fingernails deeper into your palms as you replayed the fight over and over in your brain. You wanted to storm back up to his room and punch him in the face. You despised the smug look on his face as he taunted you. He could dish out any disrespect he wanted, but as soon as you returned the favor, you may as well be dead.

You heard hay rustling a few yards away. You stood quietly, one hand on the hilt of one of your swords and the other on the trigger for your ODM gear. You began to walk slowly towards the noise, saying, "Hello?" when you drew near. You could see a figure, but it was too dark to know who it was for sure.

"Oh, sorry. I didn't realize you were on stables tonight."

It was Eren. He was brushing the mane of a horse as he spoke. You let your guard down.

"What the hell are you doing?" you asked rather harshly. You hadn't meant to say it so angrily.

"Woah, what's wrong with you?" he questioned, placing the brush on the rack to his left and stepping away from the horse. You leaned against the wall next to him.

"I really, really hate Captain Levi," you told him honestly, pinching the bridge of your nose between two fingers.

"Hey, me too. But what's your reasoning?" He kind of laughed with his words, cheering you up a bit.

You told him the story. By the end, you were sitting together in the hay. When you finished, you placed your hands behind your head and leaned back until you were laying down, facing the stars. Eren followed suit.

"Trust me, I get it," he told you, a smile hinting in his voice. "He publicly beat the shit out of me. He's not exactly in my top ten favorite people." You laughed, your first time smiling since breakfast. "I don't even think you have a top ten, Eren. Maybe a top two."

"Nah, you're up there somewhere. Probably Reiner and Bertholdt, too. Make it a top five." He looked over at you, pulling his eyes away from the night sky. You did the same. You noticed his eyes were a really pretty green. Jean would puke if he knew you had really just thought that. You chuckled at the thought.

"What have I done to get into Eren Jeager's top five?" you asked him, interested. The two of you hadn't really talked previously.

"Well," he stretched a bit, his shirt lifting to expose a bit of his stomach, "your awful taste in friends aside, you seem like a good person. Fun. Smart. Interesting. Typical top five traits. Your looks definitely aren't a detriment."

You hoped he couldn't see you blush in the dark surrounding you. "Jean would kill me if he knew we were hanging out right now." It was true, but you mostly wanted to redirect the conversation. Eren basically telling you that you were pretty made you happy and made you want to crawl into a deep, dark hole at the same time. Emotions and compliments were not your strong suit.

"Jean doesn't have to know everything, you know. Mikasa wouldn't be a big fan, either." You thought about that for a moment.

"Mikasa is in love with you. Jean hates your guts. There's a bit of a difference in their reasoning, I would say," you told him, grinning.

He ignored your comment about Mikasa and focused on you, instead. "Sure, Jean hates me. But do you?" He looked at you expectantly, his green eyes growing larger.

You looked away for a moment, embarrassed. Then you looked back and met his gaze. "No, I don't suppose I do. Should I?"

"I'd prefer if you didn't, honestly. You're pretty fun to talk to." His lips pulled into a smile as he looked at you meekly. You would typically describe Eren as anything but meek. It suited him.

You looked at each other for a few moments. You noticed how his hair fell messily over his forehead, almost touching his eyebrows. It looked nice shaggier like that. You, for whatever reason, found yourself hoping he didn't cut it anytime soon. He had a slender nose that came to a nice point above his cupid's bow. His lips were slightly parted. They looked inviting.

After a comfortable silence, you finally said, "Jean doesn't make my decisions for me, you know. Nobody does."

You saw his eyes moving slowly, studying your face. You didn't try to prevent yourself from blushing this time. "I was hoping you'd say that."

"Why is that?" you asked as his face drew closer to yours. Suddenly, Eren was kissing you. Your face grew hot as he pulled away, but you put your hands behind his head and pulled him back towards you. As his hand traveled under your shirt, your worries about explaining this to Jean faded away completely.

[ignisnocturnalia]

Hehehe I lied, but it is here now! Had a crisis about being done with my Band director's bull and wanting a grade on something really bad, did the former and decided to simply disintegrate once Friday hit. Drifter HCs will follow this, also may I say Caiatl. That is all.

Nokris x Reader

“You are a child reaching for a flame; the Taken Queen would not have you burnt.”

You were on point during the Strange Terrain strike, but you had never thought you would run into Nokris again. Granted, you realized, his death was on the physical plain while his Throne World still stood. Considering he never directly addressed you, you assumed that he either didn’t remember you or he chose not to, as oddly disappointing as that would be. The timbre of his voice unsettled you, but it was not as wracking as Xol’s; in fact, it was rather pleasing to hear.

The proposition itself was unexpected, and against Eris’s previous warnings you stopped to listen to what the Hive heretic had to say. Trekking quietly along the broken path of the distorted realm, you stopped occasionally to stare at blights littered over walls and floating in the air to see if you could catch a glimpse of the desecrated prince. The telltale sign of Taken emerging from their portals filled the air, and you genuinely prayed that you’re next decision was a wise one. 

Your ghost was probably screaming on the inside as you placed your guns to the floor, bringing your hands into the air while staring into the gleaming eye of a Knight. Grabbing your arm roughly, it tugged you through a massive doorway leading to a room that was strikingly similar to the Court of Oryx back at the Dreadnaught. The portal at the center of the room shimmered invitingly as the bony bastard himself came out; even in death, he appeared to be in his prime.

“I see you have heeded my advice; come, hope of the Light, see the Darkness.”

His claws are cold as he grasps at your shoulders despite the solar flame surging over his arms. Feeling bold, you let your own solar light extend past your body, lying comfortably across his neck with a warm glow. As a creature who worships the Darkness facing a servant of the Light, he reasonably withdraws with a hiss at your gesture

You won’t say it out loud because he obviously carries himself with extreme pride, but you can’t help but feel bad for him. How can one person be an exiled son, heretic, servant, and now puppet?

“I won’t serve Savathûn. But I think I wouldn't mind spending time with you.” Before he can question you, you are promptly pulled from the realm by Eris.

Cue Vanguard interrogation once you return to the Tower. The talk is so egregiously long you make a move that would make Cayde damn proud: “GuArDiAn, We’Re NoT yEt FiNiShEd WiTh ThIs DiScUsSiOn!” Hopefully your shining reputation will save you from any dire repercussions...

Tracing your steps back to where you first met, you look around suspiciously following the lack of noise inside the Hive breeding grounds. You had cut your comm ages ago, the constant ping of Commander Zavala’s hailing grating your ears. The ground beneath your feet crunched wetly with every step, and distantly you heard the first Hive screech. Turning in a guess to the source of the sound, you set off in a quick pace, gun in your hand.

Upon entering a new chamber, you froze in surprise as you saw Nokris lifting a Knight by the throat. Taken magic pooled in his palm and raced over the armor of the smaller Hive, the bone turning black and a bright white glow shimmering across its legs. Still gripping the soldier, Nokris slowly angled his head to look down at you.

“Little. Light.” Dropping the Knight with no grace, his imposing form closed in on you with haste. Before you could take a step back, his claws came up to close around your jaw and upper neck. The rough of his talons dug into your armor, and for a moment you worried he would pop off your helmet and let your blood boil throughout your body in the harsh atmosphere. Instead, he pulled you closer to his face and brought up his free hand to grasp your forearm.

Nokris easily dwarfed you; even if you stood on your own shoulders you wouldn’t be taller than him. Passively, your thighs rubbed against each other at the realization. A detail he decided he would catch. Teasing mirth danced in his three eyes, hidden malice swimming just behind small organs. Internally, you were probably going to pop your helmet off yourself if you got kink shamed by a Hive prince of all things. 

You squeaked quietly in surprise as he lifted you off the ground, the hand on your lower face readjusting to your hip. His hand, quite literally, engulfed your midsection as he brought you closer to him for inspection. This close, you could see every imperfection on his face. Second hand leaving your arm, you shivered as the prince ran a digit up the side of your leg and continued his way up, stopping thoughtfully at the junction of your jaw.

Staring into the glowing green embers of his eyes, there was no mistaking the murderous glint in them. At the same time, curiosity had made its home among his more dangerous faculties.

"You found me once, you came to me twice. Find me again, at the other side in the field of ash under the dark tower.” Letting you to the floor, Nokris turned his back and departed to Traveler knows where through the portal with the long forgotten Knight. Sinking to your knees in stunned silence, you looked down as a nearly imperceptible squeal broke the quiet. In front of you, was a Hive worm.

“No.” Before you could even speak, your Ghost gave its earful. 

“I can’t not take it! I probably need it to find him. Either way, I told you one of these worms would be coming home eventually, look at its wittle face.” Your Ghost made gagging noises as you fawned over the wriggling creature you held between your hands. Tucking the three eyed larva under your arm, you set out to find the way back out.

____________________________________________

The next week felt like hell. The worm continued to get bigger with every mission you went on and keeping it a secret from the Vanguard was close to impossible. You had been wracking your brain for the answer to his riddle, and to be completely honest, it made you feel inadequate that you couldn’t figure it out. You knew the other side meant the Ascendant Realm, but what was the dark tower? Where was the field of ash? You had initially thought it was at Skywatch, what with the Hive ship jutting out of the ground and the small pile of chitin inside the cave not too far away, but there wasn’t enough ash for it to be a field, nor was it under the ship point.

It wasn’t until a light snow dusted the Tower one evening that it all clicked. He didn’t mean ash ash. He meant snow! 

In a rush to the hangar, you waved a hasty goodbye to Holliday and transmatted into your ship, pulling out a layer of blankets to reveal your now cat sized worm. The grub squeed and reached its head up to your palm, crawling sluggishly into your hands. Holding the worm to your chest, you settled down in the pilot ship and gave your Ghost to plot a course. There was only one place on Earth constantly coated in snow with a structure that could be considered a dark tower.

“Ghost, set course for the Plaguelands. He’s at the Doomed Sea.”

You hadn’t been to the ravaged lands since the Siva Crisis; the whole territory gave you heebie jeebies. And yet, you were returning because one of humanity’s imminent threats wanted a chat that, realistically, ended with your head rolling on the floor.

The closer you got to your destination, the more restless the worm in your arms got. In fact, you could swear it was whispering something. Your skin crawled for a moment as you felt the phantom brush of his claw up your leg.

The moment your feet touched the ground, the world around you stuttered as the colors faded into grayscale, giving way to the Ascendant landscape. Below you, there was no mistaking the keen whispers of the worm. Its words were encouraging in a macabre way, praise and blatant lies; speaking of how well you fed it, talents being wasted on a god that heeds you not, urging you towards the ominous building looming over the shoreline.

Dust swept across at a rapid pace, as usual, in the warped realm. Coming up to the alcove, you saw him with his back turned to you. In a smooth turn, he faced you at last. Beautiful, blazing emeralds.

Relationship HCs

His idea of a relationship has wildly different parameters than any normal human would put up with

No matter where you are, or what you're doing, you can feel him at the back of your mind like a fog; it's a bit disconcerting to hear him talk in your head at first, but it becomes normal and he's actually quite helpful when you're out on missions

He expects you to help him study thanatonautics since you can die and be brought back within moments, but that's up to if you have enough charisma to convince your Ghost to let your bone boyfriend crush your skull repeatedly to see what you can learn about death

The relationship feels more like a symbiotic one rather than a romantic one, but you occassionally catch him practicing human gestures you've seen couples perform in public if he's feeling particularly good on a day

You're probably the only person who listens to him talk about all of his schtick and is able to give viable feedback; he is more thankful than he will let on about this fact

He does not like it when you try blocking him off from your thoughts and will demand to know everything you've done in the day when you see him again. In his perspective, he thinks you're trying to leave him behind like everyone else has

Will not handhold, because his hand can literally fit around your torso and because he thinks it's weird. He will, however, carry you places if you're going the same direction

He also thinks kissing is weird, but will (surprisingly!) actually let you give him kisses on his teeth; the sensation of soft flesh on his cold bones is unusual, but something he finds utterly riveting. Not that he'd let you know

Also doesn't like the amount of straight barbarity you inflict on the battlefield, but can appreciate your efficiency with your job; this is him silently worrying about your safety but refusing to acknowledge his crush on the flame throwing ape

His communication regarding affection is terrible, and if you couldn't tell shame on you. His favorite thing about you, that you will never hear from him or anyone else, is your face. He likes the way it changes into different expressions, the life in your eyes, and your lips because Hive physically cannot emote as expressively as humans do; you are an open book he has yet to read, adding new pages everyday

Nsfw 👁👄👁

First off, however you get the size difference to work, congratulations. His height over you is something he enjoys immensely when you two get into it, and it goes without saying he also likes how you "hug" him

He will fuck anywhere, literally anywhere. The floor? Yes. Against the wall? Yes. Hope you're somewhat of an exhibitionist, because he is not ashamed if any of his or Savathûn's troops walk in on you and will keep going

He bites a lot, and is not afraid to make you bleed because your Ghost can just patch you right up

Likewise, he will scratch you everywhere but he does stop to play with the softer spots

He is rough and fast, going after his own release rather than yours; however, he has high stamina so chances are you'll be overstimulated before he finishes

Absolutely a dom, he will not meet in the middle about anything of sexual nature

If you don't actively fight for your life during his build up, he will take that as the go ahead. He may be a Hive heretic, but he has standards

You don't really have the opportunity to find his sensitive spots as he usually restrains your arms, holding them above your head or pinning them down at your sides

He rarely makes actual noises, but he does hiss lowly whenever he makes particularly hard thrusts

He knows that copulation won't result in little Hive/Human hybrids running around with his blood in their veins, so 9 times out of 10 he will hilt himself and come inside you

Fluff

Uhhh, a w k w a r d

Anything that's fluffy is strictly delivered by you, and occasionally returned by Nokris since he doesn't get the point of such pleasantries

If you're fast enough, he will never get upset if you can sneak up on him for a smooch

Whatever he is doing, if you are available he much prefers having you by his side to have an extra set of eyes to help him observe (at least that's what he says)

Since his physical marks are healed quickly, he gifts you odds and ends from old planets his people have pillaged and little items you can wear on noticeable places

Hides it very well, but is extremely thrilled when you come to him when you want to do or learn something new

When you're particularly frustrated by something, he will comb his claws through your hair to his best abilities

Whenever you're with him, his demeanor is typically calmer; Savathûn's presence and influence over him is highly diminished in the face of your Light

The one thing he will willingly do with you that's remotely romantic is stargazing; not because of the romantic element, oh no, but because he wants to catalogue any changes and is very invested in teaching you about space faring

Has nicknames for you like Little Light or >Insert any game seal<

[wkemeup]

By Any Other Name (12)

series summary: When Special Agent Bucky Barnes is tasked with infiltrating the notorious gang Hydra and gathering evidence against its leader, Brock Rumlow, Bucky finds himself drawn to the woman who doesn’t seem to belong in this world of violence, the wife of the head of Hydra… you. pairing: bucky x reader chapter word count: 6.7k warnings: the moment of truth 🌹series masterlist 🌹

It was pitch black outside; the only light surrounding you from the stream of your headlights and the cast of stars gently illuminating your path huddled by acres of trees. The countryside was untouched by the pollution of the city and it was almost unbearably quiet amongst the woods, with only low hum of your engine and the faint chirping of crickets outside the crack of your car window to fill the emptiness around you.

The ink hastily written on the scrap of crumpled paper curled up in your hand was smudged. You couldn’t quite make out if it was a six or an eight in the address, but your GPS had long abandoned you several dirt roads ago, so you supposed it didn’t matter much anyway. There was nothing else around for miles. 

When you finally pulled up to what looked like an abandoned warehouse, there was no relief. It looked like something out of a horror film. The paint was chipped on the walls, the name of the metalworks company faded under years of weathering and neglect, tiles of the roof were gathering in piles on dusted, dirt roads. There wasn’t a single light in sight.

You swallowed as you turned off your engine. The headlights stayed on, reflecting on the single silver door. It was rusted along the hinges and looked completely untouched.

You had half a mind to call James to help ease the steadily increasing rate of your heartbeat, but he had been very clear when he asked you to turn off your phone and leave it behind at home. He couldn’t risk anyone tracking your location, so he said. He was acting so strangely lately, but you could sense the heaviness weighing on him.

You didn’t have much in the range of weapons in your car, not that it would have done you much good, but you stuck your keys between your fingers as you pushed open the side door. The air was brisk, sending a chill up your spine as clouds of dried dirt puffed up in clouds with every step you took. You crossed in front of your headlights until you paused in front of the warehouse.

With a heavy inhale, one you weren’t sure you’d let go of anytime soon, you turned the rusted knob and locked your car. The lights flashed off, leaving you surrounded in darkness.

You quickly hurried inside, more afraid of the darkness of the countryside than the unknown of what laid beyond the door. The slam of the door to its hinges behind you was louder than you prepared for and you winced as it echoed through the rafters.

You glanced up to find a group of people stood at the center of the room, all huddled over a long metal table filled high with piles of papers. Their heads turned abruptly in your direction.

One of them separated from the crowd, relief evident on his face as he quickly jogged in your direction; hair bouncing around his shoulders with every step, a half smile on his face though it struggled to reach up by his eyes. Ocean blue, and swarming in something darker, something pulling him under.

James.

But it wasn’t him you were looking at.

The inside of the warehouse was like something out of one of those spy movies Peter used to marathon on Saturday nights. The walls were lined with monitors, some filled with maps of the city, others with profiles and mugshots of men you recognized as friends of your husband, but the one displaying live security footage outside of your home caught your eye. 

You could see the driveway, the row of plain, well-kept bushes lining the pavement, the lights on above the garage. One of the security men you snuck past was on a lap around the perimeter and stopped to take a drag of his cigarette before he tossed the butt unto the grass.

An unpleasant shiver swept up your spine; cold and detached, and it nestled deep into your stomach.

“What the hell...” you exhaled, hardly able to take it all in.

You felt a hand graze your arm and you flinched, shocked by the sudden touch before you realized who was behind it. You turned to find bright blue eyes watching you cautiously as James chewed on the healed scar at the center of his bottom lip. He glanced sadly down at your hand, noticing the keys nestled between your knuckles and you quickly released them, slipping them into your pocket.

“I’ve got a lot to tell you,” he said quietly and there was a slight tremor in his voice, a nervousness, as he looked back to the group of people watching him from the metal table ahead of them.

“James, what’s going on?” you asked and he forced a smile to his face, one that was meant to reassure you, though he could hardly muster it.

“Come with me. I promise, I’ll explain everything.” He extended his hand to you, open and waiting, patient, and you studied the lines in his palms, lines you’d come to be familiar with, and suddenly you weren’t sure if you knew much of anything at all.

Still, you took his hand blindly as he guided you further into the room. He pulled out a chair for you at the table, just ahead of a particularly high stack of papers. You didn’t say anything as you glanced around at his friends and took a seat.

The tall, blonde man with broad shoulders and the clear line of muscles visible through the thin fabric of his t-shirt wore a slight frown on his face, though the way his eyes drifted to James protectively suggested he was concerned more than he was angry.

Beside him, slumped down into a chair of his own, was a dark-skinned man with a large, toothy grin, and dimples in cheeks. He smiled at you, like he knew something you didn’t, and you suspected that was more than the case because he was almost giddy with excitement, shifting in his seat and stealing looks at James.

“We don’t have much time before Rumlow finishes up in Harlem,” a red-haired woman to your right said.

You narrowed your eyes, recognizing her short, rounded nose, pointed stare, and perfect curve of a cupid’s bow on her lips outlined in dark red. She was familiar -- they all were -- like you’d seen them in passing but couldn’t place exactly where.

She pointed to a monitor behind you and you turned to find grainy footage of your husband sitting in at a table surrounded by men in suits you recognized from one of the dozens of parties he’d dragged you to over the years. It was from a Chinese restaurant in Harlem you got takeout from once with Peter. You gritted your teeth as you watched him clap a hand on the man beside him, throwing a wad of cash onto the table.

James nodded to his red-haired friend, pulling up a chair in front of you and turning it to face you properly before he took a seat.

“Where am I? Why am I here?” you asked tensely, unable to tear your eyes away from the monitors. You watched as one flickered from your living room to the hallway outside your library, to the staircase leading up to your room. Empty, haunted, in your absence.

A ruffle of papers to your left stole your attention and you found yourself staring at the blonde man with a file rifling through his fingers. A picture of your husband slipped out from the center and fell to the table. Even in his mug shot, his eyes held a kind of possessiveness, an arrogance, that transcended the page.

“Why do you have security footage of my house and—and Brock’s old RAP sheet?” your gaze flickered to the man sitting in the chair, watching you with a familiar kind of look in his eye, and then to the woman who was busying herself behind her laptop. You turned to James. “Who are these people?”

You could feel your breaths increasing in pace, the panic that was starting to take hold, but you stifled it down, buried behind closed doors and cement until it suffocated under the surface and all that remained was a vagrant stare and a jaw wired to stone.

James brushed his lips over with his hand, a heavy breath before he spoke again.

“I’ll be honest, I don’t really know how to say this.”

“Try,” you muttered out, voice like sandpaper.  

You didn’t realize your hands were clenched onto the bottom of the metal chair until your fingers started to ache. James’ eyes wavered down to your grip and he nodded quickly. Your heart was pounding so painfully, you wondered if he could see the thump of it through your chest.

He dug his hand into his pocket, let out a breath that looked near painful, and slowly set a shiny, golden badge onto the table. The shine of it reflected in the dim lighting of the warehouse. You dug your hands into the metal edges of the chair until you felt a sharp burn. 

“My name isn’t James Karpov,” he exhaled. Blue eyes flickered up to yours, gaging for a reaction on your face he wouldn’t find. He glanced back nervously at the blonde man pacing behind him before he continued. “I’m a special agent with the FBI and I’ve been undercover in Hydra for over a year now.”

Your features hardened over like stone, a protective layer to shield the surge of a storm thundering inside of you; the answer to a question you’d been suspecting for a while without realizing it.

You’d seen the way he flinched at his own name, how he got that kind of solemn look in the blue of his eyes when you talked about your husband, about wanting to escape it all, how he’d promised for things to be different when this was over, if he had more time. Pieces started to fall together and somehow you were still more lost than you’d been in years.

He paused, watching you, waiting for a flicker of the woman he knew to break through the blank stare currently consuming your features, but when nothing came, he let himself exhale. You focused on the soft footsteps of his friend pacing along the wall behind him. It was comforting to use his steps as a metronome, something to ground yourself because you could feel your world pulling apart at the seams.

It was a single string at the very edge of everything you knew. It only took a moment for it to unravel, within an admission of a name that was not his own, and soon the floor at your feet was covered in the broken pieces of what you believed to be true. Tattered and tangled threads.

“It started after Jack Rollins was murdered in lockup. I was assigned to this case to gather evidence against Rumlow and his men, so that we could dismantle Hydra completely; prevent it from ever coming back again,” he continued, his voice even, almost matter-of-fact, and it didn’t sound much like your James at all. It was too clinical, too rehearsed, and you could feel the sharp twist of a knife embedding itself deeper into your chest with every word he spoke.  

You listened quietly as he told you of when he first learned your name on a single page in the back of your husband’s file, how he’d known who you were before you even stepped foot into Brock’s office that first evening. He told you how he’d been assigned a cover, a new name and a history, to replace the role of Jack Rollins within Hydra as their enforcer. He’d been Brock’s right hand man for over a year and he was playing your husband like a fiddle.

“Director Fury thought it would be beneficial to the case to, um,” he released a heavy breath, as if the action in itself hurt him, “…to get close to you. He thought you might know more about Hydra’s dealings than you realized and he’d hoped you’d open up to someone who, um, you trusted. Seems he was right.”

You didn’t allow him see the way your heart caved in; jaw clenched, impossibly still, even breaths, and yet the floor had dropped from under you and you were free falling a hundred feet below. Lost to an abyss from which you were certain you’d never return; darkness barreling in and taking you home. It was where you belonged, wasn’t? It was where you had lived for years. Back to the fractured sense of safety, to the shadows lurking in the corner, to the eggshells under your bare feet made of broken glass. To lies and manipulation and deceit and ruin.

You wondered when it happened, when he’d been officially assigned to claw his way into your heart as if you were nothing but a pawn in the scheme of his mission. You wondered if it was before or after he’d gifted you A Farewell to Arms and if it was even his at all; if the scribbles in the margins belonged to his youth or if it was the carefully constructed design of an analyst with the sole purpose of hooking straight through your heart and sinking you to the ocean floor.

That moment was the beginning of it all; when you showed him your library, your most sacred place to a stranger, but it had felt so right at the time.  

Was the first moment you’d felt safe with him a complete lie?

There was always a comfort in being with him. A place for you to let down your guard and the walls you held up like stone around your heart. Beyond everything else, the one thing you knew about James Karpov was that he was safe. His presence was the only thing that allowed you to let go of the fear of the shadows of you home and the monsters lurking in the corners. He was a shining light in the darkness that had consumed your life.

You were young and naïve when you met Brock. You were eager for love and fell easily into his carefully constructed trap, overlooking obvious warning signs and the flaws of a man obstructed by the character he played.

For only a moment, you wondered if it had happened again, if you had become so foolish to allow yet another man to manipulate you and spin himself into the version of a man you’d desire until he could rip the floor out from under you just to see you squirm.  

A pang burned in your stomach, something stubborn and instinctive, one that urged you to just look at the man in front of you, to notice the way blue eyes nervously sought out your own, to see how his hands were trembling and his voice was strained, to notice that he was scared with every word he spoke. But your world had fallen apart and you could only do so much to stifle the scream bubbling its way through your chest.

So, you held your tongue as he told you about the orchestrated meetings in Brooklyn, how his friends -- his team -- had helped plan what you thought were coincidences but turned out to be carefully constructed operations. Moments when you’d light up upon seeing him, a wash of warmth to your chest on even the coldest winter mornings, and it was a lie.

You realized then why you recognized his friends; it was from the outskirts of coffeeshops, sitting under sunglasses and baseball caps, hiding behind newspapers in the distance. The quiet observers in your life pulling away at the last shreds of dignity you had.

“I was assigned a job,” James said tensely, clenching at his hands, wringing them painfully in his lap as he stared down at the cement under your shoes, “no different than jobs I’ve had before. Take on a new name. Be a new person. I’ve done… terrible things to preserve my cover, things I am not proud of. I’ve hurt people because Rumlow ordered me to. It was part of the job. I kept telling myself that, anyway. Didn’t seem to matter that I never killed anyone he put a hit on, that the Bureau stepped in to relocate my targets and hand me a look-alike that was mutilated just enough so Rumlow could have his proof and I could keep my cover. The blood on my hands is still real.”

There was a lump in your throat, one that burned and ached and was on the verge of choking you completely. You wanted to scream, or cry, or run until your legs gave out completely, but instead, you were paralyzed. Frozen in place. Stone of a statue. A single touch would crumble you.

“But you have to know it was never an act with you, Y/n,” he urged, desperation in his voice. You could hear the grief in his words, the slight tremor in the dissonance, the fear that you might reject him in favor of a man who does not exist.

You could hardly meet his eye.

He paused, watching you for a moment, waiting, longing, for you to tear your stare away from the wall beyond his left shoulder, hoping you’d find your way back to him as you always did, but you gave no inch. You held yourself still, unreadable, and he exhaled a breath that must have weighed immensely on his chest.

“After a while, I started meeting you in Brooklyn when the team wasn’t around, when there was no one to listen in and no agendas to fulfill,” he started, a little softer now as he slumped back into his chair. “I started staying at the mansion long past when I should have, just reading with you in your library because it was the only place I felt like myself anymore. I started forgetting that on Sundays in Brooklyn, I wasn’t who I said I was. You don’t know how easy it was for me to spend time with you and just let myself believe for a while that I really was James Karpov…”

Jaw wired shut, clenched, and you did not respond.

He sighed, a careful look back at his team and he continued.

He told you about the red-haired woman, Natasha, who turned out to be the sales associate from the boutique downtown where you’d bought the lavender dress. She smiled at you in acknowledgement when the heat of embarrassment stung in your cheeks.

You realized that the two men were the same Steve and Sam he’d tell you stories about on your Sundays together; old friends, brothers. A single grain of truth in a web of lies. 

“I knew, even before the gala, that my feelings for you had started to cloud my judgement,” he said slowly, laced with guilt, and your gaze flickered up to him, surprised, though he didn’t notice. You watched the shame seep into his features, his hands clenching at his pant legs. Steve and Sam turned away awkwardly as he continued, “I nearly told you everything that night. When we danced on the balcony and we almost--”

Kissed.

You remembered it well. You had committed the night to memory; to the way his hands felt pressed so delicately to your hips, the gently sway of your bodies, the subtle scent of his shampoo and how warm his breath was as it touched your skin. It was a dream, a fairytale, and you wondered if it was just that; a moment meant for the stories in your library, far away from the cruel realities you’d come to know.

James sighed, a hand brushing over his forehead, pushing away the hair from his eyes and exposing the blush in his cheeks. He was staring down at the floor, chewing painfully on his lip. He didn’t notice the way your features had started to soften, your lips slightly parted as you watched him, heart racing.

“I didn’t know how to make it stop… the way I felt about you,” he confessed, a pained kind of humor in his voice. “I’d never compromised myself like that before. I’d always been able to separate myself completely from the case, where a mask and a new identity like a costume and manipulate my targets without remorse, draw on their strings and tug at their levers. It was my job.”

You flinched; subtle, but as you unclenched your jaw you noticed a pair of green eyes watching you from behind a sweep of auburn hair. She smiled encouragingly before you turned back to James.

“But I never did that with you, Y/n, I swear it on my life,” James pressed, raking his fingers through his hair though it fell back into his eyes. “You… you found a way to push yourself through the cracks in these walls I built up and brought out pieces of myself I hadn’t seen in years. You made me smile again, and gave me something worth fighting for outside of my own damn ambitions, made me believe in a world where things could be different – kinder, maybe. You made me want to be myself again instead of these characters I so often lose myself in. You made me want to relearn who I was and stop hiding in the identities of my enemies.”

He rubbed at his eyes, pinched at the bridge of his nose, and exhaled a breath that provided no relief. “Steve almost threw me off the case entirely when he found out I’d started crossing lines between my cover and the man I wanted you to know me as.”

Your heart skipped at that, eyes flickering up to blue and you watched as he struggled to find his words. He was breathing heavy, hands constantly raking through his hair and there was a slight shakiness as he clenching them back into fists at his side. You’d never see him like this before. Scared.

“Please understand, I couldn’t tell you any of this,” he sighed, scratching his nails along the thighs of his jeans. You noticed rather quickly that he stopped trying to meet your eye. “You have no idea how much I wanted to, how much it was fucking killing me that I couldn’t, especially after--”

He clenched his teeth, stopping himself before he could say it, but you knew what he meant; the night he’d put himself on the line for Peter, how he’d kissed you through broken lips and everything changed. It was evident in the way his friends turned away, giving him space, red tips on the end of Steve’s ears.

“The director thinks I’m a damn fool for bringing you in on this,” he continued, “but, I trust you, Y/n, even if I just destroyed any trust you had in me. I know you and I know you want to see Rumlow brought to justice. I know you want to be free of him and for Peter to be out of Hydra’s control. I still know you and... despite all this, I promise, you still know me, too.”

He seemed to have finished as he allowed a deep, unsettling silence take over. You could vaguely hear the soft ticking of the clocks hanging high on the wall and the exhales of breath coming from across the room. He glanced back at his friends nervously, who offered him nothing but clenched jaws in return, before coming back to you.

“Say something... please,” he asked timidly, desperately.

There was something unpleasant churning in your stomach and you weren’t sure what it was; dread, humiliation, betrayal. Maybe it was something more like the edge of relief, so close you could just barely touch it but it wasn’t yours quite yet. Just beyond your fingertips but still there, still visible, waiting.

You swallowed, letting your hands unclench from the chair and you looked up to find his friends busying themselves with the paperwork on the table; various files on your husband and the company he kept.

You glanced over to the door, the weight of your keys heavy in your pocket. There was a pull urging you to the door, whispering in your ear like a siren’s call to leave, to run and never look back, and fall straight into the darkness you knew. It was familiar at least; a demon you knew by name.

But as you turned your attention back to the man in front of you, watched the way he hung his head in shame, accepting the worst of his fears that in your silence you’d rejected everything you now knew him to be, that call urging you to run seemed a little further away. Drowned out by the overwhelming urge to draw him into your arms, you could no longer hear the voice beckoning you away from the man you’d come to adore, perhaps even love, even if he was a man you weren’t sure you truly knew at all.

“I can’t, um, back off the case,” he started, clearing his throat as his words seemed to give out before he could continue, “but I can give you space. You won’t have to see me unless I’m around your husband. I’ll do what I can to keep my distance but—”

“Stop.”

He froze, head lifting abruptly at the sound of your voice. It was then you realized his eyes had glossed over, reflective with unshed tears, his lower lip nearly chewed raw.

You held his gaze for a moment, searching for the man you knew him to be within the shades of blue you’d come to know so well. The darkest part of yourself wondered if there were pieces that reminded you of your husband in there, if he held the same qualities that allowed Brock to manipulate you and lure you into a false sense of security and love and affection before he ripped it away.

But you’d seen the way James smiled at you from across the room. You’d seen the way the lines around his eyes wrinkled when he laughed. You’d seen the kindness nestled into every touch upon your skin, a warmth in his embrace you hadn’t known in years.

You’d seen grief consume him; pain and the guilt sweeping over his features as he told you the truth of who he was. Facets of a complicated man who was more than just one thing; subtle moments one could not easily fabricate.  

James was not just the man who lied to you. He was not only a man with a name you did not know and a history wiped clean. He was also the man who reminded you what it was like to laugh again, who reminded you that you were stronger than what Brock led you to believe and that you carried more worth than what your husband assigned to you. He was a man who took a beating that could have killed him to spare your sixteen-year-old cousin and gave over every Sunday he had just to listen to you talk and run errands around Brooklyn. 

He was messy and complicated, flawed but human. In the years you’d fallen under Brock’s spell, nothing your husband ever faked even compared to how James treated you. Brock had made himself to be perfectly designed, an impenetrable lie.  

James had been the one to break through his cover of his own volition. He had nothing to gain and everything to lose in doing so; the case, his team, his career... You wouldn’t dare allow yourself to wonder if you were within that list.  

You took a deep breath, steadying your gaze. “I have questions.”

His eyes widened, surprised, but he nodded quickly, brushing his palms on his thighs. “Anything. Anything you want to know. Just ask.”

“So… you’re not Hydra." It wasn’t a question, but you were still seeking confirmation.

“No,” he confirmed quickly. “I’m not.”

“You’re not a hitman. You don’t kill people because Brock tells you to.”

“I’ve killed,” James replied sincerely, “but never for him. I was an army ranger before I was recruited by the FBI. I don’t take a life unless I have to.”

You nodded, trying to find your ground again now. Those were the easy questions, ones with answers you already suspected to be true. It was the next ones you were about to ask that held answers you were truly afraid of. You pushed out a deep breath through your lips, though it trembled on its way out and you felt the shake of it deep in your lungs.

“The copy of A Farewell to Arms… was it yours?”

The question startled him, eyes narrowing for a moment before a soft smile curved at his lips. “Yes. Sam made fun of me relentlessly for digging through my ma’s house for it. I can’t say it had nothing to do with the assignment, because you did open up more after that but... I didn’t do it just because I thought it would help our case. I just thought you'd like it.”

You nodded, taking in his answer. It didn’t relieve the ache in your stomach, but it was something. A piece of the beginning was still intact.

“How much of it was real?” you asked, surprising yourself. The words stumbled out before you could stop them and it wiped the smile from his face almost instantly. It was like a punch straight to his gut, the wind knocked out from under him.

You swallowed, gripping painfully tight into your sweater and trying to avoid ocean blue eyes and the curious stares of his friends. You needed him to say it, needed to hear it out loud, or you might collapse within yourself entirely.

“The times you’d call late at night and we’d watch dateline over the phone or when we bought the lavender dress downtown or dancing on the balcony at the gala. All you did for Peter, every Sunday we spent together... Tell me it wasn’t just for the cover... to get closer to me so I’d tell you secrets about Hydra I didn’t know I had. Tell me it was real... that it was really you and not some character you played. Tell me you’re real. Please.”

You didn’t realize you were crying until James – not-James – threw himself down to his knees in front of you. His hands reached up to your thighs before he froze, hovering, because he didn’t know if it was okay to touch you anymore.

“Sweetheart, please, look at me,” he begged. He finally sat his hands against your thighs, just in an effort to ground you and when you didn’t flinch away, seeming to relax as your heart rate softened, he began to trace delicate patterns with his thumbs.

“Everything -- and I mean this -- everything was real between us,” he implored. There was a redness in the whites of his eyes, a subtle tremor of his lower lip as he tugged it between his teeth. “There were some circumstances that allowed me to run into you when maybe I otherwise wouldn’t have, that let me spend more time with you, but I swear on my life, nothing I ever said to you was scripted, nothing I ever felt for you was forced. Every second I spent with you was the happiest I’ve been in years. I won’t lie to you again. Not ever. Please believe me when I say that what I feel for you is real. It's always been real.”

Sniffling back tears, you let him brush a hand up over your cheek to wipe the wetness away. His lower lip tugged between his teeth in concentration, purposeful to keep the rough edges of calloused palms from touching your skin. He was so gentle, so tender with you, and it was entirely your James, even if he wasn’t.

“It was real, honey. The important parts, those were all real,” he whispered, his voice so achingly sweet it made your heart clench. There was a desperation in his voice, like the very foundation of his soul was etched into every word, his heart sitting within the dissonance. “I am still the man I was yesterday. I’m still him, sweetheart. You haven’t lost me.”

He smiled sweetly at you, though it didn’t quite make it up to his eyes. No, his eyes were filled with a remorse that consumed him whole. The guilt always sitting on the surface, the hesitation in his hands but the longing in his stare, the pain in the pleasure; it made sense now.

When you set your hands on his forearms, it startled him, his eyes darting down to where your touch met. Without a word, you let your hands wonder along his arms, sliding up his shoulders, his neck, to finally cup the sides of his face. Rigid muscles relaxed as you passed them by, his body caving into your touch with ease as his eyes fluttered closed, like he was sinking into the palms of your hands.

You just needed to feel him, remind yourself that he was real, that he was solid and tangible, and right under your fingers. The slight bristles of his beard scratched under your palms, the wrinkles of a shirt creased in his drawers, the divots in his skin from old wounds.

You let out a heavy breath, grazing your thumbs along his jawline, over the healing scar on his right cheek and the discoloration that had long faded to a soft, light pink. Marks of a man who was everything you always believed him to be.

“I don’t know what to call you,” you confessed, a whisper of a smile touching at the edges of your lips and you felt it in your palms as he choked back a sob of relief, jaw trembling under your touch.

He nodded, his hands coming up to rest on your own as he turned his head just slightly enough to press a kiss to the heal of your palm. His eyes were red and glossy, but there was a smile on his lips; it was aching and tired, but it was swollen in relief, like yours.

“For now, just call me James.”

You shook your head. “It’s not your name.”

“It is, actually,” he countered, with a nervous chuckle. He gently pulled your hands from his face and set them into your lap, though he didn’t let go. “It’s technically on my birth certificate and it’s just a coincidence this identity and I shared it in common, but it’s not what my friends call me. It’s not what I want you to know me as when this is finally over.” He paused, a deep breath in a beat later, “I would... I would give anything to hear you say my real name.”

You took in a deep breath, trying not to focus on the gravity of what he said, but it hit like an anvil to your chest. You wondered what his name was, how he might act around you without Brock hanging over your shoulder, how it would feel to be with him in the light of day; no restrictions, no hiding in the shadows, nothing holding you back from one another.

“You… you still want this— us— when the case is over?”

James paused, a sad kind of heartbreak in his eyes that you would even ask such a question. He nodded slowly before he lifted your intertwined hands to his lips and kissed sweetly at your knuckles. “I told you, honey, everything between us was real. I’d give you my whole life if you asked.”

A tear slipped past your eye as a breathy laugh escaped you, a strange mixture of awe and surprise and relief washing through you. You stayed there with him, reveling in the feel of his hands encasing yourself, the touch of his lips to your fingertips, watching as he started to come back into himself, as the guilt faded from his eyes and he was smiling at you with that flicker of light in in the blue of his eyes.

James pulled up a chair beside you, freeing his knees on the hard, cement floors, and you tugged yourself closer to him; thigh to thigh, shoulder to shoulder. He was still yours.

“So, what happens now?” you asked, glancing to the papers on the table curiously.

“Now,” a voice called from behind him, deep and commanding, and Steve stepped forward, setting a file on the table ahead of you, “you help us bring down your husband.”

You narrowed your eyes, intrigued, and pulled the file into your lap. You thumbed through the pages, eyeing the transcripts, glanced over names of men and women, over the date in the top left corner and the address of the pier scribbled in James’ handwriting.

You set the file back on the table. “You’re planning a raid for the shipment at the end of the month.”

It wasn’t a question and Steve seemed surprised by how quickly you’d gathered that from the information he presented you with. There was no doubt in your mind, you’d do anything they asked if it meant putting Brock behind bars where he belonged.

“What do you need from me?” you asked, hand seeking out James’ and he squeezed it back lightly.

“That we’ll decide when the opportunity presents itself,” Steve responded. “In exchange for your help in this and frankly, all the evidence we’ve gathered based on your unknowing intel… uh, James,” Steve cleared his voice, clearly having to remind himself to use the cover’s name, “has arranged for your immunity.”

Wide eyes met his and he offered you a shy, reassuring smile. The thought hadn’t even crossed your mind. You always assumed that the price it took to bring your husband down meant sinking the ship with you inside. You knew he held a number of charges over your head; it was why you stayed complicit for so long. But now...

“You just have to sign the papers,” James said, sliding a pile of folders across the table to you. There were two stacks and you looked at the second suspiciously before James answered your unspoken question. “I got the judge to sign off on immunity for Peter, too. It was part of my condition before I handed over the shipment log for the raid next month. Wasn’t that hard of a sell, honestly. Peter’s a good kid.”

Lost for words, heart pounding tight in your chest. “You-- what?”

James nodded casually, a slight purse of his lips like he hadn’t just doused you in a relief you hadn't known in years. “Yeah, well, no jury was ever going to convict him anyway, but I figured it was best to cover our bases. I told you I’d watch out for him, didn’t I? Wasn’t going to let you down on that promise. Plus, a kid as good as Peter didn’t deserve to be caught up in all of this. The judge could see that pretty easily.”

He was smiling softly at you but you could hardly breathe. You knew he cared for Peter. It was obvious the night he took a brutal beating for your cousin, but this was something else entirely. This was something far beyond his cover, the identity he wore like a mask, this was him at his core; a man who was true to his word, a man who was decent and kind and good.

He was your James, regardless of his name or the badge he wore.

Without the proper words to thank him, you surged forward, despite his friends standing at the table surrounding you, and kissed him. Hands pressed to his cheeks, lips communicating what words could not, and you only pulled away when you felt him searching for a breath.

His cheeks were burning pink, eyes a little wide as he nervously glanced up at Steve, who had conveniently turned his back. Natasha was smirking in the corner as she attended to the files in her hands, and Sam was sprawled out in the chair across the table, sparing no expense and grinning wildly as he winked at James.

“So, we bring down Hydra,” you said with a proud smirk upon your lips and James’ whole face seemed to light up. “We put Brock behind bars. We end this.”

Steve stepped out from behind the shadows, a hand extended in your direction. Stone cold expression melting into a soft smile, the blue of his eyes kinder than the façade he put forth.

“It’s good to have you on board, Y/n.”

[ffangirlingsince2001]

End of the Tunnel: I

Description: It’s almost been a year since Freed Weasley was lost to the Battle of Hogwarts, and for George Weasley it might as well be an eternity. He is lost in the dark, no color to be found. Until suddenly there might be a light at the end of the tunnel.

Warnings: (future as well as present) suicidal thoughts, smut, angst, fluff, depression,  attempted SUICIDE, self harm, torture, mentions of torture

A/N: So, this is pretty dark, just FYI. There will be happy moments but a lot of the time it will get pretty dark. Trigger warning applies now, just be forewarned. Please enjoy though if you are willing to suffer through the tragedy to get to the light at the end of the tunnel.

MASTERLIST

***

The world ended on May 2, 1998.

At least it did for George Weasley.

He was not dead, of course. His mother and father still loved him. Bill, Charlie, Percy, Ron, and Ginny all still hugged him. His business was doing splendid, far better than it ever had before the war, Ron was even helping him run it. And yet, the world felt as if it no longer turned because Fred was gone and that was all that really mattered.

May 2 had been awful, but the funeral was even worse. Friends, family, and strangers wanting nothing more than to hug him or shake his hand when all he wanted to do was destroy everything that touched him. He hadn’t shed any tears that day. He figured he was all out, but now that he considered it, he was sure he had just grown numb.

He had never had a problem smiling before, and even in the winter he was constantly warm, denying every coat his mother sent his way. And now, he was sure he had forgotten how to smile and even in the hottest part of July he wore a sweater, fighting off the chills that ran along his spine.

His mother had pleaded with him to go to therapy, to talk to someone about the tragedy but he had refused. There was nothing a therapist could tell him that he didn’t already know.

He knew he was depressed; he knew Fred was never coming back, and he knew he needed to move forward. He had no interest in reliving the moments when he had witnessed the cold lifeless body of his twin lying on the floor of the school they had once attended. All he wanted to do was the lock the door to his new flat and never come out. He had considered returning to his home above the shop but every time he thought of the memories he had built there his stomach churned and before he knew it he was emptying the contents of his stomach into the nearest sink. So, he gave it to Ron and Hermione and bought himself a smaller one.

He was laying in the bed that occupied most of the studio flat, thinking about the day he moved in as he struggled to get up. The walls were grey, and the bedsheets were white. He hadn’t bothered to buy curtains, so the dingy light of the cloudy morning was highlighting the dust he had let build up over the months. No pictures hung on the walls; no Knick knacks sat on the shelves. Dishes were piling up from the last spout of motivation, not that he ate a whole lot these days. Most importantly, there were no mirrors. He had ripped the bathroom one from the wall and shattered it in the street the moment he moved in, completely satisfied with giving up his security deposit for a little bit of sanity. His world was completely colorless. His skin was pale and the warmth that had generally resided in his face had seeped away like water from a washcloth. In fact, the only color one could find in the small room was his hair, shining just as brightly as it had the day the world ended.

He had dyed it once. A dark brown, the most boring color he could think of, but the moment his mother had seen it she burst into tears and begrudgingly changed it back, if only to avoid the dirty looks that Ginny shot him through the very uncomfortable family dinner.

Today was the first of March, and George could feel the anniversary of Fred’s death drawing nearer with every movement of his body. His muscles ached and his bones creaked like an old rocking chair no one had touched in a century.

As he laid there he considered never getting up, but eventually with great effort he pulled himself from the cold sheets and pulled on the dullest clothing he owned. A grey tailcoat covered a white button up and black slacks, severely pressed hung a bit short over his ankles. The shoes were so old they no longer shined. He didn’t bother brushing his hair, sure that the howling wind would mess it up anyway.

He left the door without eating breakfast and turned down the street in the opposite direction of the store. He couldn’t bare to go to work today, and Ron could handle it.

Ron had gotten a lot better at handling it.

He was right about the wind, it battled against him like it was trying to force him to go to work, but he pushed on, determined to spend his day in miserable loneliness. Somedays he imagined Fred was screaming at him from the clouds, telling him to stop being a git and move on with his life, but he had never been good at taking orders. So, without any regard for the signs of the universe he continued to push on, wrapping his arms around himself as he tried to keep warm.

In honor of his mood, it began to pour and before he knew it, he was drenched to the bone, the neat he clothes he had donned pressing tightly against this skin. By now he was in a muggle town he had never been to. The streets were completely empty, no one wanting to get caught in the torrential downpour.

He was going to turn around, go home if not to work, when he heard a voice shouting through a roll of thunder. He glanced around, searching for the source, and was met with the sight of a woman hailing him towards her store. He looked behind him, checking for someone else, when he heard a sharp laugh.

“I’m talking to you, silly. Now, come in before you catch a cold,” she called, stepping into the rain to usher him closer. He walked quickly, ducking through the doorway as he followed her inside. He watched as she shoved the door closed against the atrocious wind, the bell jingling ferociously overhead. When she had succeeded, deadbolting it for good measure she turned to face him. She wrung out her blonde hair as she studied him with bright eyes (they reminded him an awful lot of what his used to look like). “What on earth are you doing out in this weather?” she laughed, and he shrugged, unsure of how to approach the situation. He had not been met with such glee in an exceptionally long time. When he didn’t respond he smile faded and concern rested heavy on her shoulders. “Are you alright?”

“I don’t think so,” he muttered, and she nodded.

“Then I think you need a drink.” She ushered him to barstool and disappeared behind the counter. “Butterbeer or tap?” His eyes snapped to her when she mentioned the magical drink. “Butterbeer then.”

“You’re a witch?” he blurted, and she laughed, shaking her head.

“Oh no, but I know my customers, and you are clearly a wizard.”

“How can you tell?”

“The wand in your tailcoat.” He glanced down and sure enough, a faint outline of his wand was visible against the fabric. “No need to obliviate me though, I’m no snitch. I’ve had all types in this little pub of mine, vampires, werewolves after a particularly bad night, wizards, what you call muggles, I’ve even had a couple goblins gamble in my back room, no bias here.” He didn’t say anything as she twittered on, setting the mug in front of him and leaning on her elbows as she took him in with earnest curiosity. A few minutes of silence before she spoke again. “Do you want to talk about it, that’s what bartenders are for to hear all your tragedies while you drown them in the best liquor we have?”

“Who are you?”

“Hannah Gladdis. And you are?”

“George Weasley.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“How old are you?”

“Nineteen, twenty in June. You?”

“Twenty-one in April. How’d you come to own a magical bar at nineteen?”

“It was a tragic thing really, last year the owner died in a war with your sort. I was a waitress then, but he left it to me in his will, so now it’s all mine. Honestly, I’m surprised I survived long enough to own it, luck I guess.”

“What happened?”

“These men in masks came and tore the place apart looking for the owner, shouting something about blood traitors, but he wasn’t in. It was just me, hiding right behind this counter praying that they wouldn’t find me.”

“Did they?”

“Yes,” she whispered, fear creeping into her eyes as she thought about the night she was describing to him. “They used two spells. One made me feel like I was on fire and the other made me bleed, I can barely remember it. The whole thing was awful, by the time they were sure I didn’t know I could barely move. They set the place on fire and left me to die, still hunting for him, I guess since he’s dead now. Somehow someone saved me, I don’t even remember them but they must have performed a counter curse because I got out with only a few scars, but you would know all about those,” she said noting his missing ear. “Were you in the war?”

“Right in the center of it. Do you have any firewhiskey?” She nodded and dropped beneath the counter and pulled out the familiar bottle.

“I’m sorry for your loss.”

“How do you know I lost anyone?” he growled, and she offered him a sad smile.

“I lost friends and I’m not even a witch, I figured a hero right in the center of it wouldn’t come out unscathed. Also you’re missing an ear.” He grunted and threw back the shot of liquor she had poured. “You won though?”

“Sometimes it doesn’t feel that way,” he mumbled, and she nodded, taking one of his hands into hers. He watched her hands cradle his as if he were the fragile one, but he could see the scars that were etched into her fingers. He ran is thumb along one of the more prominent ones. When he glanced up, she was biting her lip, eyes focused on the thumb that was stroking the harsh scar. He whispered her name, but she didn’t move. He said it again and this time her eyes met his. He wanted to say they were blue, but that didn’t seem quite right. Her dark eyelashes were hanging heavily over them, casting shadows into the two small pools of ocean that stared back at him. He was going to say something more, let the light buzz from the liquor take control and pull her against him, but she moved away before he could. With an awkward laugh she tucked a piece of hair behind her ear and pulled herself a shot, downing it just as quickly.

“It’s not even noon,” she laughed to herself and he shrugged.

“I’ve been drunk before noon before, nothing to ashamed of.”

“Isn’t that a sign of alcoholism?”

“Not that I’ve ever heard of before.” He flashed her a tight, unpracticed smile that made his heart cringe against his ribs but it seemed to work. Pink washed over her cheeks and she was quick to busy herself among the empty glasses, searching for one to clean.

“So, what’s someone like you wandering the streets during a downpour?”

“Escaping.”

“By catching a cold?”

“Or something like that.” She laughed awkwardly, running a damp washrag over the top of the bar, avoiding eye contact at all costs, and it was killing him. He wanted to look into her eyes all day. He had to think of something, do something, say something that would draw her back.

“Why didn’t the Ministry take your memories?” he asked, and then silently cursed himself. Out of all the topics he could have chosen, he chose the one that terrified her. He hadn’t spoken to a stranger so domestically in such a long time it seemed he was out of practice.

“They don’t know, as far as I know they don’t even know I exist. And I would like to keep it that way if you don’t mind.”

“Wouldn’t it be better to forget?”

“To forget what?”

“All that pain and fear.”

“I considered it at first, but then I decided it was better to know what was coming then feel broken all over again.”

“No one is going to hurt you like that again,” he growled, far more aggressively than he had intended and she laugh, taking his hand and finally allowing their eyes to meet once more. She didn’t seem scared when she looked at him, it was if she almost wanted to believe him. She really seemed to believe the idea he could chase away her nightmares. He knew he would disappoint; he could barely chase away his own.

“You sound so sure, George, but alas, you won’t always be sitting in my little bar to protect me.”

“Then come home with me.”

She was shocked to say the least, at least that’s what her eyes said.

“I barely know you.”

“Then get to know me.”

“I’m working.”

“You said it yourself, no one is out in this rainstorm.” He sauntered towards the window and flipped the sign around and locked the door. “And anyways, it seems you’re closed.” She studied him closely, and he was acutely aware that she was still holding his hand. Finally, she nodded and for the first time in ten months his heart jolted with joy. He spun her around the bar and caught her in his arms. “Ready?”

“For what?” she began to ask but they were already gone, whipping through the air as he apparated them to the small flat.

She was laughing when they landed, clutching her stomach as she tried to catch her breath.

“My god, that was exhilarating,” she gasped. She was still holding his hand, tighter than ever. He watched her as she looked around and cursed himself for not keeping the place cleaner. “I like your place.” He was sure she was lying; it was so dull and lifeless it was almost a prison cell. The counters were dirty, and the trashcan was overflowing. “It could use a little color, but maybe that’s the beauty of it. I can never decide how to decorate so I’m constantly having to remodel, this way I can just close my eyes and imagine the walls orange.”

“Orange?”

“Or maybe a soft teal, I don’t know, it depends on my mood.” He caught him smiling again for the second time on the day he woke up feeling like death. She was like a ball of sunshine and she was standing in the little place he called home. For the first time since he had been born, he found himself wishing his home was bigger. Even when he was a kid he had never cared, but now that there was someone he was dying to impress he wished he owned the minster’s mansion.

“It’s not much…”

“It’s lovely.” Color tinged his cheeks and now it was his turn to busy himself in the kitchen.

“Would you like some tea?”

“Oh, yes, why thank you,” she said as she glanced out the window, “What part of town are we in?”

“Just on the edge of Diagon Alley.”

“Oh really! I’ve always wanted to come; I’ve heard it’s absolutely beautiful. Wow, a real wizard town. Is it true what they say about Hogsmeade?”

“It depends on what they say,” he chuckled, bathing in her excitement. It was a welcome tone, something he had not felt since months before the end of the world.

“That it’s absolutely picturesque. Someone showed me a post card once, and I called her a liar, told her nothing but a painting could be that beautiful, but she assured me it was all true.”

“She wasn’t lying, if you want, I’ll take you sometime.”

“Wow, not even a first date and you’re already promising to whisk me off to some beautiful village in the countryside.” He blushed when he realized what he had said, abashed that this woman had gotten into his head so quickly. He had never been so infatuated with anything. He turned quickly, spilling hot tea over the side of his hand, but he barely even noticed. Her eyes were big and blue as she stared at him, cheeks pink and lips parted. “George…” she began but the teacups hadn’t even hit the ground when he was taking her into his arms and kissing her as softly as his feelings would allow.

She tasted like Christmas. Cinnamon from the firewhiskey and butterscotch from the beer tainted her lips like frosting on cake he had only eaten in a distant memory. He wanted to throw her to his bed and devour her, experience every inch she would allow him, but her tentative fingers stopped him. He was stranger who had apparated her to his flat in a place she did not know, and now he was doing everything in his power to ravish her like the goddess she appeared to be.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, pulling away as far as he dared. He was not sure he would ever be able to be far from her again, not when he knew how wonderful she was. She stepped forward, still hesitant, and cupped his cheek in her hand.

“No, don’t be. That was brilliant.”

“Then would you mind if I did it again?” She laughed and leapt into his arms, pressing her lips against his. He had never understood people comparing others to home, but as he wrapped his arms around her and he felt her fingers unbuttoning his shirt as fast as she could manage. His hands dropped to the hem of her shirt, prepared to pull it off and admire her entirety but she jerked back. He stopped immediately, pulling away as he searched her face for what he had done wrong. She wasn’t looking at him again, eyes crossed over her chest as she shuffled her feet.

“I’m sorry,” she mumbled and he shook his head, taking her cheek in his hand.

“Don’t be. Tell me what you want. If it’s nothing then we’ll do nothing,” he whispered and with tentative fingers she brushed the place where is ear had once been. He wanted to pull away, but he didn’t dare, not when she looked like she was going to break.

“Very few survived your war without scars, even us muggles.” She pulled her hand away and took a deep breath before pulling her shirt over her head. He watched it hit the ground before trailing his gaze over her skin. She hadn’t lied. Scars were etched across skin that had once been soft. They were harsh and angry, still red after what he had assumed was months of healing. Silence crept into the room as he stared, anger coursing through his veins as he imagined the kind of pain that had caused these scars. “Say something,” she whispered, words catching in her throat.

“If I ever find who did this to you, I will not hesitate to kill them,” he growled and she let out a short laugh. “I’m not kidding.” She leaned up and kissed him softly, gratitude laced in every touch. He pulled her closer, fingers trailing the scars that plagued her. They tipped into his bed with unexpected grace, laughing between kisses. Quick fingers undid his pants and he followed suit, exposing soft skin raked with more scars. She didn’t pull away anymore, in fact he was sure she was trying to get closer than possible. Her legs pressed against his hips as her fingers explored every inch of skin. He flipped them over, admiring her against the bedsheets, blonde hair spread out like a halo. He leaned down and kissed her softly as she giggled against his lips.

“Don’t leave me,” he whispered before he could stop himself and with all seriousness she nodded.

“Not in a thousand years.”

[nikkithebard]

Your Angel Ellipsis

Geraskier short fic, post S1E6, post mountain-break up, hurt/little comfort, fix-it-fic, angst, angsty thoughts, featuring HSK, open ending, 2.6k words

Rating: T (Mature language)

A/N: I am totally 100% open to fic ideas if anyone wants to share some. Feel free to send an ask with a prompt, I don’t mind in the slightest. (I have never uploaded my work here before)

The bard moved with about as much grace as a broken-legged turtle, holding his lute case close to his chest. It was the only thing around him that felt even remotely real. Everything else had faded into whispers across his skin. The wind, the dirt, the others who remained on the mountain still. The soles of his boots had been worn thin, slipping over the rocky dust of the ground. Jaskier ignored it. He was far too disinterested in anything that wasn’t the very person he was distancing himself from.

Jaskier cared for Geralt of fucking Rivia.

And all he had gotten was shouts, demeaning language, and a wish fit for a djinn.

Oh, how far he’d thrown himself into this wolf’s den. He feared he’d die of heartbreak--again--if he didn’t die from the hunger and dehydration that came with getting lost climbing down a fucking mountain. How far had he gone? Felt like he had been descending in circles rather than going straight down.

Jaskier heard his own words in his mind, reverberating.

You did your best. There’s nothing else you could have done.

Who would have known the words were better suited to him and not the witcher? But, it was true. There was nothing else the bard could have done to change the outcome of this dragon hunt. He tried to talk Geralt out of this, tried to convince him this was too dangerous a task. As per usual, Geralt cared little for Jaskier’s opinion and carried on. Was that his fault, too?

His foot slipped on a larger boulder and he fell. Catching himself before he could do any serious damage, Jaskier decided to take a seat, the sun beating down on his back. Rivulets of sweat pooled around the collar of his chemise. Opening the case, Jaskier made sure his lute was alright. Of course it was, but a peek wouldn’t hurt.

The lute, as it always did, sang back at him through its dark wood, enchanted to no end. Pointless to think it would ever break, really. He withdrew the instrument, strumming the melody he had been crafting for weeks now. It had started out as a metaphor for some sort of unrequited love. As of late, it had been slowly turning it into something much sourer. With naught but the help of a sorceress he watched portal herself away nearly an hour or two ago. Jaskier was still dumbfounded that Geralt was so entrenched in the most awful example of the fairer sex.

“The fairer sex,” Jaskier mumbled to himself, strumming to the opening melody of his latest tune. “How, when she’s as unfair as a thief? A bandit?” He tilted his head, pondering. “A crook?”

Very rarely did lyrics fall into his lap so perfectly, yet the poet learned early on in his life to not look a gift horse in the mouth. Taking out his pen and notebook, he scratched off the first line of his original ballad, writing in the better one.

Jaskier sighed, unable to keep his mouth shut even if there was no one around to listen, “Bollocks, there I go again, rewriting yet another love ballad. Not that it matters, when you spend over twenty years stooped in what others would refer to as a pile of shit, perhaps every tune comes off as identical, yeah? All the words collide and all the notes fall into unbridled repetition--” He stopped, his own voice crashing into his ears, “Twenty years? Is that right?” He scoffed, fingers absentmindedly moving over the strings of his lute, “Can’t be, I don’t even--I can’t be over forty, can I?” He tried to shake the thought from his mind, yet he simply couldn’t get away from the passage of time. The time he had spent trailing a witcher that threw him away like a tankard of spoiled ale. “What...am I doing?”

Over twenty years, Jaskier had spent chasing a man for nothing. For nothing, because there was nothing else he could have done. The years dripped into his mind, at first a simple leak. In seconds, a stream. In minutes, a broken dam of thoughts and images dancing across the landscape of his brain.

At first, he had only longed for a muse after a particular dry spell of wordless thoughts that had plagued him after he arrived in Posada all those years ago. Jaskier had been coming down from a small bout of fame he founded for himself and the money had run out too quickly. And it was then that he had caught sight of the White Wolf. Only, then, he had nary a clue of who the man was. Jaskier saw armor, swords, a very interesting shade of hair. He was intrigued. As the day passed and Jaskier crafted the song that shot both of their names into the stratosphere, he realized he cared little for the money, the recognition, the women. Yes, it was damn welcome, but he found himself missing something.

It didn’t take him very long to admit the thrill of the adventure--wanderlust, to be specific--was the answer to a question he asked himself too many times. And so, when he and Geralt found each other again, he made it a point to tag along. Geralt didn’t appear to care all that much and let Jaskier do as he pleased. Only when Jaskier droned on and on about any random crap that came to mind--which was purely to spur any sort of response from the silent witcher, he wanted to get to know him--did Geralt stir enough to shut him up.

As time went on, years apparently, Jaskier found himself caring less and less for the songs. He just wanted to follow the witcher. His friend, though Geralt refused to verbally reciprocate the fact. After a while, he only wished for his company, to hear the incredible feats and adventures that befell the witcher. It wasn’t until they started to become tight on money and ended up sharing rooms together that Jaskier realized his fascinations went beyond friendly. When they were alone, with a roof over their heads and safety in their minds, Geralt would always relax a bit. He would speak, joke, smile even.

Jaskier thought he was insane in the beginning. To think he could feel anything more than a curious nature. But, no, it became quite apparent.

Jaskier cared for Geralt of fucking Rivia.

And it had become his fatal flaw.

Geralt, it seemed, truly cared nothing for the troubadour that brought him fame and coin.

And it was painful. Of course it was. The two had fought a multitude of times in the past, but this was different somehow. To blame his own destiny on the bard that had only wanted to leave this damn mountain, to leave the witch to her inevitable demise, wanted the witcher to be safe.

Perhaps that was why he had very obviously confessed himself to the witcher. Using the excuse that he had to work out what pleased him when he had done so years before. All to stave off the knowledge that his confession had been viewed as material for his next song. That his love was nothing more than musings to be ignored.

Jaskier never thought he would be faced with his unrequited affection so harshly, though he figured it would come down on him eventually. He strummed the lute, an acute anger creeping up his spine.

The fairer sex, they often call it.

But, her love’s as unfair as a crook.

It steals all my reason,

Commit every treason

Of logic with naught but a look.

He had written a majority of it a night or two ago, when Sir Eyck had gone off to shit in the woods and Yennefer had gone off to “get her beauty sleep”. Scratching off lines and writing over them, as he had gotten so used to for a long time.

Never getting the chance to tell Geralt how he felt, what he wanted, what he needed. Came to a point where he no longer thought it was ever going to happen. Watching Borch, Téa, and Véa fall to their presumed deaths--and nearly watching Geralt follow suit--changed that. He knew there would never be such a delight as “the right time”, especially if this hunt had proven to be so deadly. Jaskier wanted to say his feelings outright, hoping a song would help him in that regard. Alas, nothing ever worked out that way.

Jaskier settled for asking Geralt to allow him the opportunity to prove himself as a worthy travel companion, stretching his tone across the word “companion” to give it a different meaning. Geralt did not catch on and if he did, made no move to show it. And he was shot down.

It made him upset, knowing he had lost the battle for the witcher’s affections long before the bard had even agreed to take part. Rigged and unjust, but he should have known better than to love someone he knew damn well now didn’t care.

A storm breaking on the horizon,

Of longing and heartache and lust

She’s always bad news,

It’s always lose, lose

So tell me love, tell me love,

How is that just?

But, Jaskier cared for the witcher before they had met the witch. And, still, he had lost. He had nothing else but their friendship, and even that was gone now. It wasn’t his fault. Not this time. All at once, everything had gone to shit, more so than it had before whenever Yennefer’s influence on Geralt made his vision turn red. Always lashing out at everyone, always angry, never ever good for him.

The lute was strummed harder, the instrument making the troubadour’s emotions known to anyone within range.

But the story is this,

She’ll destroy with her sweet kiss, her sweet kiss.

The bard repeated the line, filling the melody appropriately. There was nothing else he could do but let the song continue. He was a bard, all he knew was to let the music escape him, else he might explode. Jaskier heard rustling behind him and chose to ignore it, too caught up in his emotions to stop the tenor of his own voice. If he could just finish the damn song, he would feel better.

He wouldn’t be so angry that he had completely wasted over twenty years of his life. Destroyed his own path whilst following Geralt down his. Getting them free rooms, free meals, making him famous, helping him scrounge up coin for better armor, making him hair tie after hair tie from the leather of old strappings. Fixing baths, cleaning and stitching up wounds, sleeping in the same fucking bed together. And he still lost to a lusty bitch with a hankering for destruction.

Jaskier had lost to a woman that never spent more than a few hours with the witcher at a time. A woman that caused him pain, not healed him of it. A woman that would outlive him and still cause Geralt heartache without respite. Melitele damn her.

Her current is pulling you closer

And charging the hot, humid night.

The red sky at dawn is giving a warning, you fool!

Better stay out of sight.

The troubadour's tune faltered, voice breaking as memories of the past flooded through him again. Asking Geralt a favor in bodyguarding him while being told he was not the White Wolf’s friend, which stung despite the bard’s nonchalance. Learning that Geralt needed nothing out of life. Jaskier telling the witcher that someone--the use of a gender-neutral pronoun had been a flirt, but still remained true to his heart--may want him. “I’m weak, my love, and I am wanting.” Jaskier’s tone changed, filling with longing and desire. He knew he had a penance for lofty things. Good clothing, fine wine, upstanding company. But, he steadily gave it all up, choosing a life of grime and dirt and blood. The rustling behind him came closer.

If this is the path I must trudge,

I welcome my sentence,

Give to you my penance,

Garrotter, jury, and judge.

And his chorus repeated over and over, driving home his emotional distress at losing the one person in this godsforsaken world that was still willing to deal with his bullshit. Jaskier knew, now, that Geralt had never truly been willing and was only ever acting in line with his morals. Geralt only saved him from the djinn because it was the right thing to do. Geralt chose not to harm Jaskier out of pure annoyance because it was simply wrong and unjust.

Yet, Jaskier couldn’t help but wonder if perhaps Geralt sometimes acted outside of his moral compass. The banquet, the event that had really changed the course of the witcher’s life, had been the only inexplicable act Jaskier could not explain. The witcher had helped him free of his coin, in the most minute way. Nothing in their initial understanding of the event had even the slightest to do with what was the textbook definition of a witcher.

Was it due to the fact that, even if Geralt would never admit it, they truly were friends?

Jaskier had little time to continue his reverie, a soft hum from behind breaking through his thoughts.

“I will never understand why I am oft referred to as a ‘garrotter’.” Gravelly voice, low toned, and calm. Jaskier froze, music stopping. How much had he heard? And even more, he caught on to the metaphor immediately.

Jaskier cleared his throat, refusing to look, “It also means ‘killer’ or ‘hunter’.” He said plainly. “Not to mention your name matches the sound of the word a bit.”

“Hmm.” Geralt said, “That’s not the first time I’ve heard that.”

It was a wonder they were even speaking. Jaskier was always so quick to forgive the witcher, though. Yes, he was still hurt and angry. On the other hand, he would fight to keep their friendship and wouldn’t let their squabbles get the better of them. He would just have to bottle his pain, again. Well, maybe put the cork back on the bottle if he was being truthful. He’d let enough spill out of him over the last few days and the song didn’t help.

Geralt walked, moving in front of the bard, gear in hand, “The long way down is safer, but we have a lot of ground to cover.” Face emotionless, golden eyes stared down at the distraught bard.

The bard shook his head, not knowing how to proceed, “Geralt--”

“I’m sorry, Jaskier.” The witcher cut in before the troubadour could make a long-winded speech. His name always sounded intimate when it crossed over the witcher’s lips. Never casual, always private and personal.

Jaskier gave a pained smile, blue eyes still rimmed red with sadness, “Good, that’s all I wanted.” No, it wasn’t. He kept that bit to himself. He stood, placing the lute back into its case and placing the strap on his back.

Geralt gave him another straight look, but his eyes always displayed the man’s thoughts and emotions. He knew Jaskier was lying, especially if he had been paying attention enough to know the truth behind the bard’s lyrics, “Hmm.”

They continued down the mountain together, both silent for once. It wasn’t until they had reached the bottom that Jaskier finally fell into a mindless chatter. His thoughts were becoming too heavy and it wasn’t appropriate when he had company.

They didn’t talk about the song, not for a long time. And when they did, there was no turmoil or miscommunication on either end.

There was only an understanding.

[jubilantwriter]

Of Blood and Static

Chapter 7: I hope to see you soon one day.

(AO3)  (First)  (Previous)  (Last)

Word Count:  7059

////

She despises the loops.  The memories never seem to be wiped clean anymore, and her awareness only grows stronger as they continue to tear the cycles apart.  So of course the world would start lashing out violently.  Mono comes to rescue her from the Tower as he always does - bag missing and tinier than she remembers.  But he also seems… more different than usual.  Twisted and broken as she is, even her monstrous form can see the obvious signs of harm.

A severe limp.  Hand clutched to one side.  And blood.  Blood on the corner of his mouth, an ever growing haze clouding his eyes as he struggles to stay upright and conscious.  Brows furrowed in pain as the last of his adrenaline drains away.  He staggers forward and collapses against her form, almost comically sliding down her raincoat as she cries out in her broken voice.  

The music box is her treasure, her one comfort in this room- but no, no that's not true.  She pushes it aside for the moment and carefully cups the boy in her hand.  He's hurting, he needs help, he can barely move.  Thoughts and thoughts push through the haze of her mind, her moment of escapism fading away as she stares down at his broken body (a girl in yellow is falling falling falling into the ocean never to be seen again until a boy in olive is falling falling falling as he’s dropped into the abyss by her hand just as a man in blue is falling falling falling until he's broken into pieces, broken and mangled and bent in all the wrong ways and she screams screams screams-).  

Reality is always a harsh wake-up call, but it's the wake-up call she chases.  Safety means nothing if the little boy with the paper bag isn't safe with her.  The music box continues to play, but she pushes herself forward.  It plays and plays and plays and coaxes her to stay, won't she stay?  Please, please stay, it's so nice and safe here with no monsters in sight (except for her), and she’ll never have to worry ever again.  She’ll have everything she needs and more!

It's tempting.  So very tempting.  But the little boy gives a harsh wheeze, and her mind turns to Mono Mono Mono Mono he's hurting he's dying why why why why-

She breaks down the door with ease and shuffles her way out into hallways and doorways and more hallways with brightly colored lights, and she's lost, so very lost and Mono is dying, she has to get him out of here-

"Th-there."  He points feebly towards a door, and she follows his directions without a second thought.  The Tower shakes around her, annoyed by her attempts as they try to escape.  Each exit morphs the Tower around them as the walls turn to Flesh with eyes bulging out to watch their every move.  More hallways lead to more Flesh Walls protruding through the cracks.  Mono gives a wet cough as the Tower shakes around them until the walls become nothing more but Walls.

Her shuffling grows frantic as the Tower collapses around her, intending to trap them in this prison covered in ever-watching eyes (eyes, always eyes, always always always eyes watching, mocking them, and she hates them, she wishes they’d leave them alone, leave them ALONE-).  There's a bright light ahead of her and- the exit!  So close!  She forces her bent limbs to move faster, holds Mono closer, and she can feel the Walls closing in on her, grabbing at her and trying to pull her back even as she crawls ever closer to the exit-

But reality is harsh.  Just as she's about to make it through, the Walls collapse around her, pulling and dragging at her limbs as she screams and thrashes against it as Mono yells and feebly struggles and-

-disgusting, slick and fleshy, audible wet blinks that stare and convey a smugness she wants to destroy, the Walls pulse and slide and separate him from her grasp and she screams and fights as that tiny warmth-

No!

No!

Give him back!

She's spat out, gangly and monstrous and twisted with empty hands into an apartment too small for her size.  A music box follows after her like a taunt.

Play with this instead of the boy.

It's not the boy.

It's not Mono.

It’s nothing but a beautiful lie.

She screams as she smashes the music box with her bare hands, metal splintering with a wretched laugh, and it hurts, it hurts so much, like she’s being smashed into pieces, but it doesn’t hurt as much as having him ripped from her hands so easily, so she slams her fists down over and over and over again and she screams give him back, give him back-

Metal cuts into her hands as she screams.  The contraption is bigger than her now, her anger and rage cutting her out of the fantasy completely as she stands before the remnants of that saccharine dream.  And what does she have to show for it?  Only cold hands and broken sobs.

As she hugs herself, her Shadow appears before her, morose and quiet and a reminder that she has to keep going.  Her stomach growls, and her Shadow looks down at a poster by its feet before nodding to her.

Move forward and satisfy the Hunger.  It disappears without a word as Six approaches the poster with heavy, mechanical steps.

The girl travels and becomes a woman.  She becomes the Lady with her right hand man, the Caretaker.  He stands besides her, watching anxiously as she presses her palm uselessly against the glass.

Memories upon memories upon memories never prepared her for this.  The Tower did something to her Thin Man.  Did something that turned him more into a monster than he'd-

("...they took control of my prior iteration and turned him into more of a monster than he was ever meant to be.  Or perhaps, what he was always supposed to be, but could never fully realize.")

"...Caretaker."

"Yes?"

"How close are you to working things out with the Ferryman?"

"Well," he flips through his notebook quickly, fingers twitching nervously as he scans the pages, "it looks like he's confirmed the island is habitable, but he's unsure how safe it'll be and for how long-"

"It'll have to do."  Her voice trembles with an unrestrained emotion as her fingers curl on the screen.  She misses him terribly, so how dare they, how dare they.  "I will do what I can to bring back our dear friend."

"...Odd that he's our friend when I didn't get to meet him this time around."

“Yes," she says through gritted teeth, "a true shame."

"...Six?"

"Yes?"

He rests a hand on her shoulder, eyes glinting from under his bangs.  "Don't let them win."

Quietly, she removes her mask just enough.  Just so he can clearly see the fangs in her smile as she feels a familiar hunger for vengeance dig its claws into her being.

"I don't intend to."

The cycles end as they are to continue.  Mono is viciously, horribly, violently taken from her each and every time, and the Thin Man is no longer a familiar silhouette in the television screen who offers companionable conversation and eager hope for a change to come.  The Tower laughs at her efforts, laughs at how she tries to save the boy that had her imprisoned over and over again, laughs at her efforts of trying to take him back over and over again.

It laughs when she claws at the Flesh with broken nails, struggling and tearing at disgusting meat with bulging eyes as she tries to protect her friend, only to have him ripped away again and again and again.

It laughs when she pounds at the television screen with monstrous fists, distorted screaming shattering windows and destroying the device to pieces before she turns her rage onto the object that was supposed to calm her.

It laughs when she lashes out with her powers, too far away to harm the Tower itself, but still trying to somehow warp the television in her quarters and forcing it to work for her like how her friend once willed it to work, glass shattering and smoke curling into the air as she howls with anguished frustration.

The laughter is agonizing, echoing and repeating as she feels the lingering leers from the Eye, judgmental and chastising as if to accuse her, claiming it to be her fault.  If only she’d stay in her role, continued these torturous cycles without trying to escape like frantic rats trapped aboard a sailing ship.  If she were a lesser woman, she would have succumbed to the jeers aimed at her.

But she’s not.  She has no room for misplaced guilt when revenge quickly fills in the gaps that her anger and grief cannot.  A new goal arises besides their goal to escape, and she’s determined to see it through.

(They made a promise, and promises aren't made to be broken like this.)

When brute strength fails to work, when her hands are covered in too many scars to justify her failures, she turns to the plethora of books in her bookcase.  Pages and pages are turned at terrifying speeds as she searches for answers that the various grimoires may hide.  The Caretaker comes in with meals and reminds her to eat, to calm her Hunger lest it overtakes her, but she refuses in the midst of her research.  There is her cursed Hunger, but there is also her hunger that takes precedence over most everything else.  She will eat once she sees his face again, his silhouette, his familiar words rolling across the screen.  Her hunger motivates her to keep searching, keep looking, keep hunting.  

The only time she pauses is to make time for her Caretaker, pausing to speak with him and his discoveries, drinking in his presence before she loses him too.  They both make progress, inch by little inch, cycle by cycle.  Even with all the time in the world, she finds herself growing more frantic as the cycles continue and she sees less of the Thin Man that whispers from her broken memories.  Books are tossed about, left scattered on her floors as volume after volume fails to present her with the solutions she needs, the steps she could possibly take to free the Thin Man.  Piles mark the passage of each cycle, books left to gather dust as she abandons one shelf for another.  Her library is mostly scoured and it leaves her frantic with ever growing anxiety as the books continue to pile uselessly around her.  What was the use of collecting knowledge if it couldn’t aid her in her time of need?

Hope nearly escapes her as she grabs an old, worn out book too thin to be considered part of her usual collection of tomes.  She’s about to discard it, denounce it as useless as her eyes quickly skim the pages.  And then.  

A picture catches her eye - a description that’s so unlike what she’s used to reading fills her with a rare sense of hope.

A little breakthrough.  It’s an excitement she hasn’t felt since she was a child and had (found that little hat for Mono, the dingy sailor cap that looked like it had seen so many more better days before her little fingers plucked it out from under a desk and thought ah, perhaps Mono would like this little gift of hers) explored apartments with Mono looking for edible treasures left forgotten by the previous residents.  She glides gracefully to the Caretaker’s room, looking around once before kicking open his door rudely.  The man inside yelps in surprise, notebook dropping from his hands as she barges in and slams the door shut behind her.

“SIX!”  He’s already scolding her before she even gets a word out.  “I thought you grew out of doing that!  Don’t you remember the last time you did that you broke my door?!”

“Yes, and who replaced it?”

“I did!”

“Doesn’t matter.”  She brushes off his offended squawk and slams down a book on his desk.  Papers go flying everywhere as he yelps and runs about catching what he can.  Ah, just like the good old days of pestering one another endlessly.  

“Six!”  His offended yelling does nothing to stop her.  “For fuck’s sake-”

“Cursing already?  I haven’t even shown you my antics yet.”

“Your an-”  He sputters and looks at her wide-eyed from under his bangs.  “What have you done now?”

“To be more precise, what will I do soon?”  She quickly opens the book and flips to a bookmarked page.  Tapping on a picture brings the Caretaker closer as he leans in to see it better.

“...A charm?”  He leans back out and frowns.  “Since when were you into charms?”

“It’s not any charm, you ignoramus.”

“That’s a big word coming from a small person.”

“Shut.  It.”  She ignores his giggling in favor of looking over the charm.  It’s quite simple in design - a small pouch is tied up with a drawstring with patterns sewn into the fabric, the pouch holding something inside.  The book claims that it holds sacred inscriptions on paper in it but… 

“Hm, how old is this book?”  The Caretaker takes it from her and flips to the front, only to frown in disappointment.  “No year.”

“Does it really matter?”  She takes it back and opens it to the selected page.

“No, but also yes.”  He taps on the picture of the charm.  “The description says it holds sacred inscriptions, which typically means holy.”  The Caretaker glances at the shadows that curl around her feet as he continues.  “I don’t think there’s anything like that in this world anymore.”

“Then we’ll just have to make our own.”

“Six.”  He turns to her fully and braces his hands on her shoulders.  A knowing but sympathetic gaze keeps her from brushing his hold off.  “Your powers aren’t exactly like that.”

“I know that.”  Still.  Her eyes linger on the charm’s description, reminding her of that feeling of gentle, kind protectiveness that she’s ever been so blessed to feel not once, not twice, but thrice now.  It’s a well-meaning, warm feeling that she’s terrible at creating herself.  The dark arts are denoted dark for a reason, and everything about this charm is completely unlike her very essence.

Still.

("You're the spiteful spitfire who will last the longest out of all of us.  And we're depending on you to bare your teeth and fight when we can't."

"Who else would be strong enough to strongarm a change like this?"

If there’s anyone who could force the impossible to happen, a small voice says within her, it’s you.)

She takes hold of the Caretaker’s sleeve and tugs in that childish way she hasn’t done in years.  Begs for his attention in the smallest of actions even when she already has all of it.

“Sometimes you have to fight fire with fire.”  The sound of mirrors shattering echo in her memories of loops upon loops upon loops of fighting.  “Maybe all I have to do is make my fire the stronger one.”

He squeezes her shoulders with a nod.  "Alright, but don't burn yourself in the process."

"I will do what it takes to take him back."  Still, she reaches up to give his hands a reassuring squeeze.  "But I promise not to destroy myself in the process."

"Good."  He smiles and pulls his hands off her shoulders.  "Whatever it is you figure out, please don't test it out on me."

"No promises."  Ignoring his aggrieved sigh, she picks up her book just as he pulls his notebook out and flips through the pages.  Come to think of it, how much farther has he gotten with his discoveries?  She teleports behind him in a single blink and tiptoes to see over his shoulder.  The notebook is opened to a page filled with scribbles that look... more like entries than the usual diagrams and notes she's used to seeing.  The phrase "Thin Man" catches her eye as it repeats over the page, and-

The Caretaker snaps the notebook shut with a barely restrained shriek and glowers at her over his shoulder.  "Don't.  Do that!"

"What are you reading?"

"None of your business."

Hm.

"You mentioned the Thin Man a lot in your entries."  She tilts her head to the side.  "Were those past ones?  You haven't gotten the chance to meet him yet-"

"Yes I was rereading old entries for very important, specific reasons related to- you know, to our freedom, so stop being a bother and get out!"  He points to his door as she giggles behind him.  "You have your... tasks to do that I’m sure are just as important!"

"You're blushing."  A guffaw nearly escapes her as she pokes his cheek.  "Please tell me, why are you blushing?"

"Hhhggh- out.  Now!"  He grabs her by the back of her kimono as she squawks in protest - he's wrinkling the fabric! - and practically tosses her out of his room.  "Shoo!"  The door slams in her face as she straightens up with a prim "hmph", the book safely tucked under her arm as she makes her way back to the quarters.  Whatever secrets he keeps in his notebook, she'll be sure to suss out later when she has the time.

For now though.

For now, she needs to go through her collection of old kimonos and fabrics in hopes of finding something suitable for her charms.  There's no telling how many she'll need to make before she gets it right, but she's willing to dedicate as many loops as possible to make her plan work.  

Time has never been one to run out on them.  This she knows from experience.  But as each day drags on, as each moment passes with no change, the anxious feeling builds and crawls under her skin.  The buzz of static that should be familiar no longer sounds in her quarters.  Instead, the snip-snip-snip of scissors takes up the empty space as she carefully sews and stitches and creates these little pouches meant to hold blessings.  It's a shame they cannot do what they're meant to do.

It would have made her life easier if she truly could make a ward to fend off evil spirits and energies, or even to just cast a protective spell.  But the nightmarish world they live in fails to allow such liberties to exist.  She takes up a brush and tries still to make some sort of protective inscription.  She takes up the needle and tries to sew a pouch to hold such hopes and well wishes.  She takes up an art that was never meant for her, still trying and persevering.

Despite all her hard work, despite replicating the pouch and its design to near perfection, the charm refuses to work as intended.  No matter her intentions, no matter how hard she tries to dampen the darkness inside her, dark magic will always be dark magic.  Her power taints the paper and instead houses a destructive force that would rather harm the holder than protect it.  But still she tries and tries and tries.  Against all odds, she fights to work with cards dealt to her.

Dark magic cannot be used to protect - it works better to destroy, to manipulate, to change.  But such things have workarounds.  For instance: those nomes that shamble about her ship.  True, they never will resemble the little children they used to be and are doomed to a life where communication is near impossible, forced to labor away until a paradise is found for their hopeless little lives.  But there’s a little twist to their story -  they will never be hunted by adults ever again.  Otherwise ignored by the forces that would have killed them at a single sighting, these little creatures can live an otherwise safe life, so long as they stay out of the way.

A twist.  It's all she can depend on as she imbues the small sheet of paper with her power.  The power to drain the lifeforce of anything around it.  This tiny sheet is dangerous - it could drain the holder's lifeforce if she's not careful.  Her little Guests are proof of that as she watches them writhe uselessly at her feet, charm clutched in their disgusting, meaty hands as she tests it out on them.  With each fallen Guest, she adjusts the potency of her little “charm” and tries to make it focus on a specific type of energy.

The Signal Tower works on frequencies that are otherwise untouched by her.  But the insides are just as fleshy, just as meaty as any other living creature.  It is both alive but not - a paradox she can exploit, much like how the loops have constantly exploited herself and the Thin Man.  One little charm won't be enough to kill an entire building, but it may be enough to weaken the surrounding area enough to prevent whatever brainwashing or mental torture it could inflict on her Thin Man.  The next problem she has to fix is the duration - it has to last for as long as possible.  Past the midlife of a loop, until the end of their lives.  A quick drain, one she's accustomed to, won't work.

It needs to be a slow, gradual drain.  And it needs to be focused on one particular entity to keep it from harming the children.  There's no way of knowing if it will work unless she tosses one of her Guests into the Signal Tower's domain, or if she somehow manages to attach it to one of the Viewers in the Pale City just before they are sucked in.  But it feels like she's running out of time - each minute passes by her like a haunting whisper, a silent taunt that she may never save her dear friend from his fate, and that they will forever be stuck in the loops as a result.

Her final product is nothing short of simple - made from the brown fabric of her kimono, the golden thread she manages to find is used to very carefully stitch in the characters that she's seen in her books.  "Safety" is what she hopes it denotes.  The back of the pouch has her mask embroidered in.  Whether it can heighten the power of her charm, or simply to show the Tower just whose power is slowly draining it from the inside, she doesn't care.  All that matters is that the little boy is protected to an extent.  Perhaps the life force or energy taken by the Tower will be directed to him; perhaps it will help in keeping him lucid enough to fight off the Tower's influence.  Or perhaps it will help in building some form of resistance against the Tower if he has some of her power within him.  No matter what, all that matters to her is that the boy grows into a man who can keep his wits about him.

Of course, the charm is big for a child, but she accounts for this and makes the little drawstrings into straps of sorts so that he could choose to wear it on his back (under his coat, if he has the sense to do that), keeping it like an extra layer of protection.  The little charm sits innocently on her palm.  

Perhaps this will do it.

The last thing she needs to do is find a way to actually get the charm to the boy.  Pocketing the tiny thing, she finds herself once again barging into the Caretaker's room without a care.  He startles with a yelp, notebook juggled in his hands before he catches it with a relieved sigh.  The old thing is tattered around the edges, but the leather bounding looks carefully maintained, almost lovingly so.  If she could count all the tallies he's made, would she be able to figure out how long they've been at this impossible task already?

"Six?"  Irritation drops from his posture as he looks over her form.  "Is something wrong?"

"I'm at an impasse."  She presents him with the charm and wonders if she needs to give him context.  How many loops have passed?  Just a few?  More than that?  Less than?  Keeping track was never really her thing.  "I don't know how I'll get this in the hands of the boy."

"Hm."  The Caretaker steps forward and takes the charm from her hand.  "A charm?  Ah."  He keeps it looped on a finger as he quickly flips through and scans his notebook.  With a nod, he closes it and puts it away.  "It wouldn't be easy for us to simply go on land and hand it to him."

"If only."

"But."  He smiles as he hands it back to her.  "We can certainly try mailing it out."

"To the boy?"

"No.  To Roger."

"Why him?"

"My notebook tells me that the Thin Man once told me a story of how he, as a child, handed a package to a resident in the Pale City.  It was one of the few times a resident didn't try to kill him.  Likewise, when I am working with Roger, he's ah, said to me, so to speak, how he got here.  A little messenger gave him a package from the Maw that told of his accepted employment."

"Oh I do recall sending a package out to him long ago."  Replacing employees she killed as a child was always quite the surreal feeling.  "Even with you around, we still need a Janitor.  Or maybe I should mean, especially with you around."  She gestures to his disorganized room with a poorly hidden chuckle.

"Uh huh."  He rolls his eyes at that before turning back to his desk.  "I suggest we keep the charm with the package and leave a note for Roger.  Tell him to hand the charm to the little messenger as a tip for his services."

"Do you think it'll work?"  She wanders over to the Caretaker's side as he sits down to write the note. 

"I don't see any other option."  He takes out his brush and quickly writes it out.  After the ink dries, he folds the letter up and puts it in an envelope.  She places the charm into his waiting hand and watches as he drops it in with the letter.  "Only thing we can do now is hope it works.  And if it doesn't, we try again."

She takes the letter from him and holds it against her chest.  All bets were on Roger now, and if the monster was anything, he was at least... reliable, to put it simply.  The Caretaker quickly scribbles something down in his notebook before waving her away.  

"I suggest getting that package made ahead of time before our time's up."  He looks up from his writing and smiles.  "Methinks the clock's already begun to tick on my end."

As his words sink in, her heart sinks as well.  Her glide forward has her embracing him close, mask buried in his hair as she sighs.

"How can you be so calm about your death?"

"How can you be?"  Always like him to deflect.  Still.  She hugs him closer and refuses to let go for as long as she can.

A few days later, after she has the package ready with a note to her future self to mail it, she sees a familiar blue blur fall past her with a chilling scream.  A glimpse over the railing has her finding his broken form splayed out in a growing puddle of blood.  She'd think that after experiencing loops of the same tragedy, she'd have run out of tears to shed.

But things always manage to surprise her as her hands reach shakily under her mask to feel the moisture that gathers underneath it.  Soon enough, her loop ends without a whisper from her Thin Man as she closes her eyes in tears. 

The loops continue as they are wont to do.  Very little changes as they go on.  Mono still gets beaten and bruised beyond what his little body can cope with.  The Thin Man still remains silent and unreachable beyond the screen of her quarters.  But Six notices the differences.  

Or at least, her Shadow does.  The little thing whispers in the Lady's head as she continues about her business, fashioning a new charm as per the notebook in the Caretaker's hands, as well as the Shadow's little guidance.

Bits and pieces of memories help guide her hands through the motions, her sewing fervent and desperate as she bites her lip.  Each attempt is aided with a little change the Shadow had noticed - he walked without a limp, he could drag the hammer, he could manage a single sentence.

Small victories, but not enough to make it end.  Still, the Shadow continues to list each accomplishment. 

"He managed to walk by himself to the bridge this time," the Shadow whispers, filled with childish hope and confidence.  

The memory of a boy holding her monstrous hand as his staggers fill her mind, and nothing of the scene fills her with that same amount of hope and confidence.  Instead, it fills her with a heartbroken pain as she recalls how his hand slipped from hers, how he tried to push and save the monster that she was with a pained smile before the Walls claimed him again.  The Flesh had crashed down on him, stealing him from her yet again even as she cried and screamed for him, hands desperately clawing at the Flesh before she was tossed out unceremoniously.  He hadn’t even tried to reach out for her, didn’t even ask for help.  As always, Mono’s main goal was to protect her and never himself.  How the Shadow cries with excitement at such a scene leaves her wondering how much it has seen to find this cause for celebration.  

"It's working!"

"But not enough," she mumbles to herself, mask removed so that she can bite the thread off.  The pouch is put aside as she reaches for the paper and ink.  As soon as the writings are inscribed, she focuses all her energy and power and spite into the sheet, teeth bared and gritted in anger as she channels all that rage into the sheet.  Take her friend away from her, and she'll take more from the Tower.  More and more and more until the boy can grow into a Man, a Thin Man who can fight back against whatever torture the Tower puts him through.  Shadows dance and swarm around the page as she forces the essence into the paper.  More and more and more.  She puts more and more into it until she can practically feel the cursed energy that drips from the paper.  Quickly, she folds it up and slides it into the pouch.  As she's about to tie it off into its signature straps, she grips it tightly in her fist and imbues it more with her dark magic.

Just in case.

Another sheet of paper is grabbed as she quickly scribbles out the familiar note for Roger, setting up the letter and package necessary for the Janitor's employ.  It's gotten to a point where the motions of setting up the package are as familiar to her as going through the motions of killing the Hunter, or being caught at the school, or burning the Doctor alive - now it's preparing the package for the Janitor she will later kill as a child.  A weary sigh escapes her as she slumps undignified in her seat.

How long must they keep this up without him?  The thought of leaving him behind in pursuit of their freedom disgusts her and feels too unlike the guilt that still lingers in the back of her mind.  Even without asking the Caretaker, she knows he’ll refuse the concept as well despite having never met him in loops.  But how long can they keep this up?  What if they run out of time before the Eyes try to disrupt them more aggressively?  What if they have more to contend with than the Maw jostling itself violently, or the Tower destroying and manipulating a boy into a monster?  Whispered memories from repeated conversations with children whose names she will never know remind her of the other monsters that still linger out there in the world.  What if they come to ruin everything they’ve struggled to prepare so far?  What if, in the name of survival, in the name of their sought after freedom, they have to-

A loud bang startles her out of her reverie however as the Caretaker howls with excitement.  She quickly covers her face with her mask as the Caretaker closes the door behind him.

"Six!"  He practically barrels into her as he grabs her by the shoulders, pulling her out of her slump and onto her feet.  "Six, I think I will die today!"

"Could you not be so enthusiastic about your death?!"

"I think I'm allowed to, given the news I have for you!"  He pulls her away from her desk and drags her towards her bed.  Once he sees her seated reluctantly, he pulls out his notebook and plops down next to her.  With a wild speed, he flips through pages before settling on a rough sketch of an island.  Bushes and trees that look to be laden with fruits grab her attention, but more so is the sketch of the monster- man, who continues to take her younger self to the Maw.  The same man that the Caretaker has taken detailed correspondence with.  The Caretaker jabs at the sketch enthusiastically.  "We found it."

She straightens up as the soft voice in her mind coos with excitement.  "The safe haven?"

"More or less."  He shrugs as though it can't be determined, but the hopeful gleam in his eyes says otherwise.  "The Ferryman finally found the island.  A place for children that is safer than whatever it is the Maw has to offer."

No adults.  No monsters.  Food for as long the little ones may need.  

"Home," the little voice breathes out like a saving grace, "a real home."

"What about shelter?"  She hates to rain on his parade, but she knows that even with food and the lack of adults, the children can only manage so much on their own.  "It's a bare island with only so much."  

"I'm going to try and smuggle items down to the drop-off."  He turns to another page where a list is compiled among the tallies.  Blankets, pillows, tarps, buckets, even spare basins-  "Children are clever.  I'm sure they'll be able to figure something out with these."

"It can last for only so long," she murmurs, and she recalls the books in her library that are otherwise untouched.  "Perhaps, a few of the books may have something about survival in the wilderness."

"I've checked."  The Caretaker shakes his head but lacks any disappointment despite his declaration.  "Nothing in your library except the dark arts and manuals for running the Maw, books of old traditions long since gone-"  He pulls torn out pages from the back of the notebook and reveals diagrams of baskets and techniques for weaving.  Her eyes quickly glance over the pages, her excitement still bubbling despite the words of doubt that pour from her mouth.

"But there's no guarantee that the children will have bamboo-"

"They can improvise.  See what they have and do what they can."  He stows the papers and the notebook to take her hands, squeezing them tight.  "Everything is set.  All I have left to do is try and sneak as much as I can off the Maw before I die.  And while I do that, you focus on the Thin Man."  His eyes soften at the mention of a man he's never gotten to meet in… so many loops.  "You always talk so highly of him, and my notebook has pages and pages of entries that make me wish I could remember those conversations I once shared with him.  He sounds kind, funny.”  A sad smile crosses his features as he fails to grasp the kind of nostalgia the Lady carries.  It’s unfair, truly.  The two men must have gotten along before in the past - apparently when she wasn’t around to witness it much to her chagrin - but having to read about it and never really know what it’s like to be graced by a presence they both yearn for…  “I'd really like to meet him again one day."

She squeezes back, her mind set and determined as she meets his gaze.  "I'll ensure it.  I just need to keep trying.  We're so close, I can feel it."

"Good."  He pulls her into a hug and digs his fingers into her kimono.  "I want to finally be free of all these tragedies." 

She buries her face into his shoulder and clings just as tight to him.  "We'll make it.  I want to know what it's like to live."

A sigh escapes him as they remain like that.  Precious minutes tick away, and she takes the moment to reeducate herself of his warmth, his scent, the way he huffs when he doesn't want to let go, a habit he's never grown out of since they were children.  Hugging always seemed to soothe him, and letting go was always something he loathed to do.

No wonder the children took so quickly to his comforting presence.

Ever so reluctantly, they pull apart, and he reaches over to readjust the pin in her hair carefully.  "There," he says with a huff, "now you look as regal and elegant as you should be."

"Try not to let the Maw kill you off so soon."  She takes his sleeves and tugs on them lightly.  A soft chuckle escapes him as he pulls her into another embrace, tucking her head against his neck with a sigh.

"I'll try not to."  He rocks them back and forth on the bed, humming lightly as they take in each other's warmth.  How did she manage to survive these loops without the Caretaker's comfort nearby?  There is no doubt in her mind that being so close to him has made her softer, but.

Perhaps this softness is what changed her from wanting to stick with that sorry excuse of "survival", and made her crave for something more.

Something just as soft as the Caretaker's smiles and warmth.  Something that could be shared with another person.

She closes her eyes and hums with him.  Whatever time she has with him, she'll take.  

The clock ticks on, and the loop continues.

He falls, as he always does.

But not before she notices that the nomes have diminished in number.

A little girl in yellow stands above her, anger radiating from her as she screams and roars at the Lady in tears as blood drips from her mouth.  The Lady smirks, and hopes that the anger festers in the little girl as a boy in blue drags her away, a power newly inherited within her soul.

The loop ends as it begins, and the new Lady of the Maw comes across a package so drenched in dark magic that she nearly drops it from the sting.  Still, at the behest of that small voice in her mind, she sends it out and continues her task of growing stronger, more powerful, pieces of memories falling together quickly as she recognizes the picture for what it is.

More and more and more.  That's what she does until her fingers bleed from how often she still manages to prick herself on the needles.  Scraps of fabric litter her room, kimonos snipped to pieces as mannequins lie bare in another room.  The stench of ink permeates the air as her brush continues to write character after character, stroke after stroke.  Her motions move with a remembered fluidity, nothing like the mechanical actions she took to arrive at the Maw.  There’s an importance to what she does, a quiet desperation that pours into her work as she puts her hopes and prayers into this tiny little thing she creates over and over again.  Her fingers sting, little drops of blood mingling with ink as she carefully makes the straps for a charm that is yet to be sent out.  Dark magic flows into it, flows until it overflows, flows until she grits her teeth and growls, flows because she won’t stop, can’t stop, not until he’s safe again, not until he’s safe with them, and she pushes and pushes and pushes until-

Suddenly.

In the corner of her quarters, where a television is left almost forgotten for decades and decades and decades.

It turns on.  And an unfamiliar but familiar hum of static greets her.  The charm falls from her grasp.  It barely makes a sound as it hits the floor, the Lady rising up slowly from her work area with shaking breath.  A wordless cry escapes her as she rushes over and presses her hand against it as familiar habits resurface.

Wait.  Wait and watch as the signal tunes itself.  The static turns and straightens out into an image.  She holds her breath as the screen twitches and stutters, as if threatening to end this little moment before it can begin.  But of course, her old friend is oh so very stubborn.  The screen refuses to shut off, continuing to persevere as the image fights to straighten itself out.  With a low, tuning whine, the screen makes a soft pop as finally the television does as it is supposed to and.   

And there.  In the middle of the screen.

There sits the familiar silhouette of a familiar man.

A sob escapes her as she presses her masked forehead against the glass.  Fingers curl in a half attempt of grasping a hand she's only felt in her childhood.  No hand presses back against the screen, but warmth still radiates from the screen as the figure straightens with awareness.  Alert.  Present.

Words pop up beneath the figure, and she nearly collapses from pure rapture as she shrieks her ecstatic sobs.

"Hello, Six."  

Warmth.  So much warmth.

"Mono...!"

She has her beloved Thin Man back.

[star-killer-md]

Dream A little Dream of Me Pt. 7

Welp. It’s been uh, a long fucking time. My only excuse is college is hard and also I’m lazy. Anyway, here she be. Thank you to everyone who continues to read this cause I need it to exit my brain and it’s incredibly nice to not just like, scream Kylo porn into the void. 

I hope y’all enjoy and feel free to leave me a comment or reblog or dm if you are so inclined. 

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Part 8

Warnings: Inappropriate use of the Force, Force sex, angst, nsfw, y’all know the drill

Summary: In which answers are found. 

Ship: Kylo Ren x Negotiator!Reader

Word Count: 6.6k

The room smelled too sweet, the kind that lodged under your tongue and ached in your jaw. It made you long for the silence of your seaside room, made you strangely thankful that Kylo Ren often never filled it. But only for a minute. Because thinking of him reminded you of how you’d woken to an empty bed and cold, damp sheets and that you were certainly not thankful for. 

Meanwhile, Lem Alba seemed intrinsically compelled to do exactly the opposite. 

In fact, once he’d guessed you wouldn’t chew his head off every time he opened his mouth, it never closed again. You weren’t entirely sure if this annoyed or pleased you. But when Lem came to your door and invited you to brunch before all campaign staff were carted off back to the Federal District, you agreed. 

If only to avoid being left alone with your thoughts. 

“Not to grandstand,” Lem babbled between sips of his drink, “but I often feel some of my skills are wasted working just as a personal aide.” 

You glanced up from your plate and nodded, “I think most people in this profession tend to believe that. We’re all a bit insatiable.” 

He chuckled, soft voice melding perfectly with the chatter and bustle of the surrounding tables. You couldn’t help but think that Lem fit in well here, as much as he tried to deny it. His edges blended seamlessly with the velvet and silk background. It reminded you of when he’d plucked you right out of the crowd your first night here. 

“You First Order people have a way about you. Something in the way you stand a bit too straight.”

Something in the way you’re always waiting for the ball to drop. 

“Yes well, I’m not gunning for a power grab,” Lem sighed and rolled his eyes. 

He looked very much like a scorned child and you felt a twinge of remorse, “No, I didn’t think you were.” 

“It’s alright,” he ran a hand through his neat hair and stared at you over the rim of his glass, “I just get so bored of it all sometimes.”

“Mm, me too,” you said around a bite of some extravagant concoction that dripped embarrassingly down your chin. 

You thought of blood and saltwater rolling across your skin and quickly wiped it away with a napkin. 

“Really? I wouldn’t have thought that would be an issue for someone in your position.”

You had to try very hard not to scoff out loud, settling for a disbelieving raise of your eyebrows. Piles of paperwork taller than the Commander filled your head, glowering officers and incessant incident reports—your life nothing more than a series of other people's mistakes that somehow became your fault. Grey walls and meetings that never ended. 

Come to think of it, you’d been bored and tired and frustrated your whole life it seemed. Although, not so much anymore. Still just as exhausted and angry, but less like a pacing animal in a cage. The thought sat uncomfortably in your stomach as you wondered when exactly that had changed.  

Of course you already knew the answer. 

You always were attracted to things that kept you on your toes. 

“Should we discuss this speech I’m supposed to be giving?” you asked. 

If Lem noticed your less than subtle change in topic, he didn’t show it for which you were grateful. 

“Certainly,” he gestured for you to continue. 

“Well, I’ve had it outlined for quite awhile since the powers that be were oh-so specific about the subject matter,” you began, watching Lem grimace sympathetically. 

“Yes, I believe I’m meant to collect a draft from you by the end of the week.” 

The joints in your shoulders popped when you slumped forward, hanging your head against the weight of far too stringent deadlines.

“I’m well aware,” you sighed. “Normally I wouldn’t be so neglectful of the timeline, I’m just having a hard time...focusing.” 

The barely concealed mark on the curve of your neck throbbed as you recalled the massive, decadently handsome distraction that consistently occupied your workspace. Really, how were you expected to get any quality content produced with that dark, looming shadow always poisoning your mind with questions and completely inappropriate fantasy. 

Currently, your entire body seemed to constrict at the notion that it was no longer strictly a fantasy. Your muscles corded taught, pulling like a ruched seam and tugging painfully at the sinew. It felt almost as if you were a marionette with invisible strings controlled by equally invisible hands that tingled as they jerked you about. You got the distinct sensation that someone was watching you, but resisted the urge to turn and look. 

Lem—completely oblivious to your inner turmoil—perked up and offered you a blindingly white grin full of ramrod straight teeth. 

“I have an office I’m more than willing to loan out if you’d like to make use of it,” he said. 

You considered the idea, chewing on your lip. Maybe getting lost in speech writing would be good, you thought. Something easy, something formulaic would do wonders for taking your mind off, well, everything. 

“As long as you’re offering,” you flashed him a strained smile and went back to shuffling things around your plate. 

Lem continued to spew an endless stream of comfortingly meaningless ramblings and you bathed in the sound of it, looking up occasionally to offer a hum of acknowledgement. You didn’t really care what he was saying—whether it was opinions for opening lines or who you should thank first or what color to wear that he thought would bring out your eyes—but you couldn’t remember the last time you’d had a friendly conversation with...anyone. 

So you let him talk, and nodded every once in a while and basked in the normalcy, the mundaneness of the scene. Until, of course, the peace was shattered when your server returned with a new cocktail for Lem, who promptly spilled it all over the table. 

You watched it unfold like the audience of a holodrama: the waiter, tall with an abundance of black curls and long fingers extending the glass, their hands touching for just an instant, the scarlet blush that tinted Lem’s ears when he glanced at the man’s face and stared transfixed even as the drink spilled off the table and onto his slacks. 

It felt very suddenly as if you were seeing something you shouldn’t be. 

But the moment ended quickly and quietly, fizzling out with a whimper as the waiter with all his curly hair frantically mopped up the mess. His voice was low and pleasant when he apologized and rushed off to get another drink mixed. 

For once, you had the urge to participate in the conversation. 

“Who’s that?” you asked, flicking your eyes up briefly and then back down to the wet mark on the table cloth. 

Lem shrugged and fiddled with the stain on his pants, “Nobody.” 

And for once, it seemed, he had nothing else to say on the matter. 

It was truly a challenge to keep the amused smile from splitting your cheeks as Lem so clearly tried and failed not to make a complete fool of himself every time said server returned to clear plates. And when a beautifully decorated fruit tart found its way to your table—decidedly marked as ‘on the house’—you were graced with an extraordinarily toothy, childish smile from your dining companion. 

Your chest ached with it, the display of reality. 

On your first night here, you’d thought Lem looked too much like all the other First Order officers you were forced to work with. Thought his hair was too perfect, his suit too pressed, words too cherry picked. 

But here you were again, getting drawn in by these stupid, simple instances of existence in relation to others. You craved the feeling of fading into the background as Lem stuttered whenever he tried to thank the boy with his curls and warm smile. 

It was strange too, to see that people truly did flush and brush hands and chew their lips and smile so freely. For whatever reason, you’d been under the distinct impression that was an exclusively fictional pursuit, saved for holofilms or storybooks. 

Did those things exist in you? Were there times when you’d fluttered the way Lem did now, cautiously stealing bites of his tart, trying to preserve the delicate design for as long as possible? Or had they atrophied and fallen to dust from disuse, nothing more than a vestigial organ, unnecessary and forgotten—ready to pump your body full of toxins at a moment's notice should it burst. 

And that only raised more questions. How incomplete had you been this whole time? How long had you been ignorant of your deficiency?  

And did it matter?

But that was not something you could ever answer. So, you sat back and watched and listened and breathed it in. 

Appreciated from afar this show of innocenceweakness.

You jolted in your seat, shoulders bunching together as if a hand had grabbed you from behind. The double voice rang out in your head, echoing up like it was shouted from the bottom of some pit inside you. You knew that voice though—would know it anywhere by now.  

It was him, of course it was. 

You could feel Kylo Ren like a shroud, a dampening of the outside world. When you listened closely, you swore you could hear the sound of crashing waves, the crunch of sand under boot heels. The smell of salt and skin and bloody water filled your nose. Your chest was burning, a prison for some roiling, angry creature that flung itself against the steel bars of your ribs.

His ribs.

His heartbeat, a pounding and ruthless tattoo.

His feet already moving in time to the beat, carrying him farther and farther— 

Is it? you shouted back.

The words tore at your throat even as you sat in silence at the table. But no response came, instead the chatter of the dining room returned and Lem tilted his head in concern, standing and gathering you up by the arms. 

He pulled you down the poshly ornamented halls, chattering still but shooting glances down more often with his brows furrowed. You let him lead you, thin arm looped around yours, back towards your quarters to ‘help you pack,’ he said. And you didn’t bother discouraging him. 

You already knew the room would empty. 

***

The meeting had been dragging on for quite nearly an hour already. You were seated at the far end of a comically long table staring off into oblivion, eyes having glazed over nearly ten minutes in when one of the relations staff started going on about color coordinating suits. 

Although, you were not completely tuned out. It was very hard to be when just a few seats away sat the Representative himself with his grotesque excuse for an advisor positioned at his right hand. Fortunately he hadn’t spared you a glance, but it was a challenge not to keep one eye on him at all times—to not consistently feel your calves twitch, ready to bolt through the nearest exit. 

You understood now what it must be like for all those prisoners sitting in the Finalizer’s belly—backed into the final corner, waiting for Kylo Ren to swoop in like a shadow and leave them flayed open to be tossed out with the rest of those who have outgrown their usefulness. 

You’ve been trying not to think too specifically about...him since you’d returned to the Federal District, your room here just as empty as the one by the sea. His shirt, the one you’d stolen was still packed neatly into your bags. You thought about throwing it away, or tossing it in the corner for him to find. But then you remembered the bits of torn up packaging and lace and that you would not sink to that level. Physical reminders aside, your head had been blessedly—or maybe concerningly—devoid of any voices that were not your own since your, well, ‘fight’ you supposed was the word for it at brunch. 

Then again, all you ever did with him was fight, but this felt different. 

There were plenty of reasons for the Commander to be angry with you, in fact, you didn’t think there could ever be a shortage. However, this seemed just a little too...petulant for your liking. 

You recalled some of Hux’s old rants. Generally, you’d just let him rave like you were just another piece of furniture in his office, stewing in the same hot, bubbling pot of indignation. You could hear him now:

“He’s a child, a sulking, immature youngling completely incapable of a single rational thought.”

And you finally understood what he meant. 

If only you were allowed to use the silent treatment, but that seemed to be a privilege only for those higher up in the food chain. 

Besides, you were far too classy for such elementary tactics. 

You spat the last words and hoped to the stars that wherever the hell Ren had run off to, he heard them. Which one of you was the weak one now?

It was Lem who pulled you from the dark, brooding hole you’d dug yourself as he caught your eye from across the table. The speakers were switching, a half-hearted applause ringing out in the cavernous room and he flashed you a quick roll of his eyes. You bit back a smile at the way he jumped when Gahl turned to rattle off some inane order and Lem scrambled to take a note down. 

Watching it reminded you of how he’d nearly leaped out of his suit when the waiter boy with curly hair brought by your plates. Jane was his name. You’d discovered it while Lem was helping you pack, happily filling the silence with how he was much too smart to be working as a server.

And as you thought, your traitorous mind led you inevitably back to the looming, black specter that haunted your every waking minute. You would be kidding yourself if you thought you could ever have given the Commander the cold shoulder when truly he was all you ever thought about. Even before, even if it was just to remember how much you despised him. 

Past tense now, you noted worriedly. What a terrifying concept. 

But your brain was moving quickly past that, tucking it away in some far, deep corner to only be touched on long nights when you were up far past the shift in day cycles. 

Now it was replaying your brunch, closing up on a still of Jane’s hand on the glass about to tumble, on the lip biting, starry eyed and heart pounding look in his eyes. And then he was changing, the skin of his hand growing lighter, milky and soft with scattered freckles. 

Then it was your hand reaching out. Your hand slipping on the glass and Kylo Ren—sweet smile on his face—staring down at you blushing like a ripe fruit in summer.  

His lovely crooked teeth flashed behind lips like pillows filled with the softest featherdown.  

The tips of his fingers brushed your hand, light and nervous in that not-quite-accidental way that should have made your heart leap into hyper drive. Kylo’s eye flicked down at the floor, downcast coyly and glancing every few seconds to catch you staring at the pink in his cheeks.

You watched the scene as if through water, some stark, salty barrier that coated him in a film of non-reality. You waited for the star shine look of his eyes to pull you in, waited to feel your hands shake and your pulse race and any number of other inane, fluttery things that you had seen Lem stumble through.

But the sight of it, the look on this man's face—because it was most certainly not Kylo Ren looking at you with honey eyes, sparkling shy dips of nectar—it was...

It was not at all what you’d thought. 

It was revolting. 

It was an antithesis come to life.

It made your skin crawl with the unnatural feeling of it all. 

Kylo Ren’s face was not built to look at you this way, did not contain sickeningly gentle smiles, his hands knew no soft brushes of fingertips.

No, they wielded saber blades and crushed bone and spilled blood.

They tangled in your hair and molded mottled fingerprints into your skin 

His lips were carved from marble that could not comprehend such an innocent up turning, unless it was to mock his opponent.

They sucked permanent brands of ownership into your skin, and made them throb when you thought of him. 

And that was all you would ever want him to do. 

As much as he roused the caged and angry beast that resided in your bones, as much as he lied and withheld and left you to wake alone—

You couldn’t bear this bastardized, cheap imitation that stared at you sweetly.

That was not your Commander. 

That was not your Kylo Ren.

And you would not have him any other way.

That thought sat heavy with you and called to life something in the depths of your being. A fire, red and electric sparked to life. You recalled the vision he’d shown you. Recalled his words echoing:

“All I see is a whore who has no idea what she’s getting herself into.” 

You felt yourself slip into the memory of his hands burying themselves in your flesh. The image of yourself—ruined, marked, and so clearly his—was crashing to the surface of your thoughts like whitecapped waves on a stormy sea. The ache in your neck returned, as though his hands were wrenching your head back to make you watch as he split you in half with his cock. You saw it in incredible detail, the veins of his length sinking into you to the hilt in one long roll of his hips. It stung and made your nerves sing with the pain of taking him. 

It was delicious. 

It fed you the pit inside you like meat thrown to a starving beast. 

This was how he was meant to be taken: painful in his beauty, lovely in his destruction. 

His skin was so warm when he pressed your back to his chest and growled in your ear: 

“So desperate for your Commander’s cock, aren’t you?” 

And yes, of course you were, of course you always were because really had you ever felt complete or whole without him filling you to the brim? But it wasn’t just his cock you needed buried in you. No, you craved him in a way that transcended your physical being. 

Separate. That’s what he told you, that there was something more to you than just your body that could exist outside of yourself, could slip into his head and find him even when you were dreaming. 

And you were desperate for the feeling of his thoughts. For his mind, for whatever it was that let you hear him whispering all the things he could never say aloud. 

His voice in your head was the only thing that soothed the churning in your guts, it was like salve on a burn, cooling like the mint of his breath. The steady beat of his blood the only thing that truly set you at ease. 

Yes, that was your Kylo Ren. 

Possessive and withholding, saying everything in brief glances and the twitch of of jaw. Complex and often painful and perfect. 

You wanted him that way.

And you needed to hear him. 

You couldn’t stand the silence any longer.

Kylo? 

The single word echoed across whatever void your mind was inhabiting, crosses bounds to seek out something on the other end. 

You waited and wanted and— 

And then you were not so alone in your head anymore.

But the meeting room was coming back into focus and everyone was staring directly at you. The large holoprojector in the table’s center showed the first, familiar graphics of your portion of the presentation. From across the table, Lem was staring at you, brows furrowed and questioning. 

“Right,” you said, making your way to the front of the room.

You felt as though you were back in the academy, bland and boring faces all staring up at your false smile. You tried not to focus on them too hard. “As the delegate from the First Order, I’ll naturally be making the announcement of endorsement. This will be submitted to Mr. Alba for review by the end of the week along with the Order’s formal statement of apology.” 

You nodded and the projection moved on, showing the next set of animations, “Now, as I said, these will be submitted at the end of this week, so if there’s any—”

There was a hand sliding up your thigh. It was distinct and massive and coated in leather, the feeling of it so incredibly acute under your clothing you almost choked in shock. But when you slapped a hand down, there was nothing but empty air. 

The crowd for the most part seemed not to have noticed your pause, too caught up in whispered conversations to the side or staring blankly at the tabletop, so you cleared your throat, “If there’s anything you’d like to be included that should be given to me by tomorrow evening at the latest.” 

Your heart was pounding in your chest, the pulse of it clear all the way to your fingertips. Taking a shaky breath you continued to go over the list of other asinine requests, falling easily into a familiar rhythm. Presentations like this were half your job back on the Finalizer. It was home turf, and you were able to flick on autopilot long enough too— 

What was that? you asked incredulously into the void of your mind

Silence echoed, and you glanced briefly around the room, though thankfully you’d looked down at your notes when the hand returned. This time much, much higher. The unmistakable feeling of leather catching on the edge of your panties made your jaw drop. 

You called. 

Kylo’s voice reverberated through your skull, his tone was blank but you could feel the strange mixture of amusement and annoyance that was not yours. It was irritating on a level you’d thought impossible. 

Well I’m a bit busy if you hadn’t noticed, you snapped, grinding your teeth when his disembodied scoff graced your ears. 

You’d think it might be one of the most alluring things you’d ever heard if the stares of so many faceless campaign staffers weren’t pinning you down at the same time.  

Hmm, he hummed, unconcerned or unbothered by whatever was going on outside of the little world that consisted of just the two of you. 

His hand—because that’s what it had to be, his hand, somehow—curled under the hem of your panties, ripping the elastic to the side where it dug painfully into your skin. 

Stop, you hissed it, spat the word at him and tried to will away the fingers that pulled the meat of your thighs apart. 

But they only spread your legs further, a rush of cold air hitting your cunt and tensing your stomach as his fingers drew up up up— 

You’ll just have to keep quiet, won’t you?

And, of course, since you’ve never been all that good about following orders, the second he plunged two, impossibly thick fingers deep into your pussy, your voice caught in your throat. The garbled half cough half moan half wounded animal cry made every head in the room turn to face you.

Even Atreus, whose dead, white blue eyes locked in on your face and never blinked.

You froze, struggling to recall your place as Kylo worked his unseen fingers father into you, coaxing a wave of slick heat to drip from your core. Your hands bunched into fists, nails digging crescent moon holes into the skin of your palm in an effort not to gasp when he hit that lovely spot inside and made your knees threaten to give out. 

Don’t stop, now. Unless you’d like them to know what a little whore you are, Kylo growled from somewhere deep inside you. 

You caught your breath, plastering a smile on your face and taking a sip from the glass of water being offered to you. 

“My apologies, where was I?”

Shuffling through your notes, you picked up where you’d left off with proper terms to use when addressing members of the Order. You tried not to move, focusing squarely on the projection and schooling your expression—at least you hoped you were. Atreus’ stare never left you now. Like he could smell the lie on your face. Or the way your pussy gushed with ever renewed thrusting of Kylo’s leather fingers, the ridges creating a sinful drag against your walls. 

Well if I’m a whore then what are you? 

From whatever corner of your mind he was lurking in, Kylo chuckled softly. 

Much worse, he mused. 

You bit back a scream when his thumb found your clit, rubbing swift circles with the smooth material. 

But in your head, your voice rang free, and you let out the string of curses you’d been holding back, voice cracking into a whine when he added a third finger. And just as he spread you open, scissored your entrance and glided against your walls, something else opened too, gaped wide and you spilled into it.  

You could see him, but it was a different him, from a different time, walking the halls of the Finalizer. His boots ran out against the durasteel until they came to an abrupt halt and silence filled the corridor. There was a slight tremor in his hand, a minuscule shaking as he gripped his thigh and fell back against the wall, breath coming heavy through his mask. 

It was practiced, the movement of his hand that fumbled with the layers of his robes until his cock sprang free, hard and leaking and with a lovely red flush to the head. Your mouth watered at the sight of his hand stroking long and fast along the shaft, thumb teasing his tip and collecting the little beads of precum that glistened there. 

This is what you do to me, he said. I hear all of it. Every thought you have. I hear how badly you want my cock pounding into you and my hand on your throat and— 

He groaned in your head, the same way you knew he must have in whatever memory you were viewing. Distantly, you could just barely feel the movement of his hand as he jerked himself, hips bucking up into his fist. 

You were not faring much better. The words kept tumbling out of your mouth, sometimes trailing off on a particularly hard thrust of his fingers. Your head spun with this new confirmation. He’d heard all of it. Every frustrated thought, every time you’d goaded him in meetings and hallways and when you’d lie awake— or not so awake—and think about how much you maybe, probably, almost certainly didn't hate him. Not that you hadn’t known, that he could hear you. Not that you hadn’t suspected that it had always been him, not some imaginary replication. That was very clear, but now. Now you had the truth. Now you knew for certain. 

Kylo Ren had always been more than just a dream. 

For so long he had watched you crumbling from afar and said nothing.

And who knew how long he intended to keep you in the dark. 

If there wasn’t a target on your back right now, would you have ever found out?

Kylo, you gasped the words in your head as his thumb sped up in its rhythm on your clit and his fingers stroked your walls, what is this?

You needed to know. You deserved to know. 

And you could feel the words. They were there, right on the tip of his lovely pink tongue, about to find their way past the crooked edges of his teeth, lips loose in the pleasure of you. But the burst of white that clouded your vision and finally made your knees buckle drowned out any truth he may have spared you. Your combined releases flowed thick like heavy metal through your veins as you felt the pulse of him slowly fading from your mind, slipping from your grasp. 

Your hand shot out to grab the table edge, holding yourself upright as everything in your mind went blessedly, horribly quiet and the room grew much louder. Time was unclear to you. The projections showed you’d managed to get through over half of your presentation, but you called none of it. 

Lem was standing up now, walking briskly over to you with a hand on your back and another under your elbow. The fingers in your cunt had disappeared, leaving you feeling empty and cold as your slick stuck to the inside of your thighs. 

“Ah, I believe our financing presentation is up next,” Lem called out, motioning quickly for the team to take over and leading you back to your seat. 

When you were safely sat back in the chair, you felt his stiffly gelled hair brush your cheek. It smelled overpoweringly of apricots and vanilla. Too sweet. 

“Are you alright?” he whispered. 

The concern in his voice was evident, but you were lost in the past few minutes and too frustrated by the silence in your head to appreciate it. 

“Fine,” you mumbled back and turned your head back to the blank table. 

You didn’t look at him as he rushed back to his place by Gahl, who’s gaze never shifted your way. Unlike his advisor. Even now the slip of a man in his dark suit and red tie stared at you down his nose like it was the barrel of his blaster. 

Like he was taking aim. 

You swallowed and tried to go back to that space where time did not exist and your head was not so empty, but it didn’t not come. 

Instead, you sat and listened and hoped you wouldn’t leave a damp spot on the cushions when you left. 

***

There were a lot of rules in negotiations. 

The First Order made sure its best and brightest had them all carved onto the backs of their hands before they ever set foot in the situation room. When you closed your eyes, you could see the words flashing in your mind. You knew them better than you knew yourself. But maybe that wasn’t really saying much. You’d been discovering quite a lot of personal details recently you weren’t previously aware of. 

Though, that was besides the point now. 

Now all you could think of was that the number one rule to a successful negotiation, was to always know more than your opponent. 

Knowledge was your strength, knowledge was your red crackling lightsaber, knowledge was your fist closed, throat crushing Force. 

That was how you came out on top, by constantly keeping the upper hand—by always having an ace in your metaphorical back pocket. 

But right now, you were losing.

And the frustration of it was going to consume you. 

Because you didn't know what or how or why Kylo Ren was in your head. In fact, you weren’t even sure if it was your head he was in. It felt much deeper than that now. And no matter how hard you tried, you couldn’t keep him out. Whatever you’d done, whatever you’d let in that night on the sand with the sea standing witness, you would never be able to take it back. 

Kylo Ren was a liar. That you knew, because you were a liar too. 

Knowledge was your power, but lies were your currency. They were what you traded at the table, they were what slipped the easiest from your tongue and made sure you walked away from a deal with more than you’d come in with. 

And Kylo Ren was not in the business of negotiations, so there was nothing you could ever offer that would pry his jaw open and spill all his secrets. Nothing that could persuade him to tell you what exactly had taken root in your chest when you’d accepted him, took him inside and wanted to keep him there. 

But you needed to know. 

The desire to understand consumed you and every thought in your head. The same head that found itself clunking against a new desk in a new office with the same unending dissatisfaction. 

Lem had left you a few hours ago, setting you up in his workspace with a glass of water and a concerned smile. You knew you were being unnecessarily rude to him, and had you been less shaken, you might have felt some guilt over it. 

Now you were staring up at your datapad, document resolutely blank, and unable to think of anything other than the way Kylo’s skin reflected the light off the ocean or how his hair curled into little ringlets when it was soaked through and dripping onto your face and— 

You groaned, knocking your forehead into the desktop and squeezing your eyes shut against the barrage of images and the strange, uncomfortable ache they incited. You rested your head on your arms and tried to block out the light of the office, let yourself drift and tried to recall...well what you weren’t sure. 

The Force always seemed so far away, so fantastical that you weren’t ever truly convinced it was real. Not until you’d seen it first hand, watched the bodies of countless ‘troopers dragged from the hallways with not a mark on them. It simply wasn’t something anyone talked about, not at the Academy, and certainly not when you started working under Hux. 

It was...energy, you knew that much. And it was in everything, everyone you supposed, though stronger some than others. You knew it could be used for more than just making objects float around, although for what other purposes you weren’t entirely certain. It certainly wasn’t something you’d ever been able to use. 

But you thought it must have a hand in this, whatever it was that let you see, hear, taste, feel the Commander even when he was so far from you. Somewhere deep in the dusty corners of your mind, you knew that this would always be the case from now on. That even with light years in between, he’d only ever be a hair's breadth away—a whisper of his name or a beat of your heart. 

It was hard to swallow that notion. Hard to comprehend that you would never be alone in your skin. Never would you feel so lacking. What a cruelty, you thought, that it had taken so long. That you had been born into this world incomplete. Your Commander would call that a weakness, but really wasn’t he just as unfinished as you. There was still some gap in him waiting to be filled.

So, then, why couldn’t you find him like he could find you?

You didn’t have the gifts he did, you couldn’t make doors fly from their hinges or break bone with just a twitch of your fingers. And maybe that was the problem. Maybe it always would be. 

Voices from the hall broke you from your stupor. Two of them, the first old and grating, the second slick like oil that left a bad taste in your mouth—the representative and his advisor. You’d recognize them anywhere now. 

“...well I’d say that a drink is in order,” Gahl was saying, trailing off as they walked further from Lem’s office. 

“Sir, we shouldn’t be leaving—”

Atreus spoke that time, the sound of it trickling like cold water down your spine. Thankfully, the representative spoke over him. 

“Lem is here, he’ll take care of things.”  

A hand slapped the closed door currently keeping you hidden as they passed. You stayed still at the desk until the footsteps had completely petered out, listening to the expensive click of their hard soles die away into silence. Until now it had not occurred to you how close they were. How close the blade was to striking. You let out a breath and looked around. Everything seemed a bit more foggy than usual. Then, from across the room, you heard it—a soft creaking. And when you looked up, the door to Lem’s office was slowly falling open on its hinges. 

Like it was pulled by some invisible hand. 

And you felt the same tugging, the same formless compulsion, the same ghosting over your flesh. 

Across the hall, another door was drifting open by degrees, revealing a meticulously kept office with a shiny gold name plate:

Atreus.

Slowly, you let yourself be pulled—a puppet on strings—walking noiselessly across the corridor. In the doorway you paused, staring at the intricate black lettering. You wanted answers, and something told you this is where you’d find them. 

Into the belly of the beast. 

You took a careful step over the threshold, the air honey-thick and clinging to your skin. The office was spotless, not a paper out of place as you circled around the massive desk and ran your hands up the array of drawers. Each one was furnished with an ornate golden handle that glimmered in light from the hall. 

To your right, a drawer slid open just an inch or two. You watched, eyes wide, as it shuttered of its own accord out of place. And your hand similarly seemed to have a mind of its own, reaching out to grasp the handle and reveal it’s contents. 

Inside, nestled atop of a stack of folders was a small, black notebook. At first glance, it seemed innocuous. Not many people used pen and paper these days. But then the space around it started to shimmer, locking your gaze until the world outside it turned hazy. Shaking, your hand reached out fingertips brushing the leather bound cover. You bit your lip, teeth worrying the flesh as you sat on the floor and pulled the book into your lap. The ragged edges of each page caught on your nails when you flipped them open. 

Written in small, messy scrawl, was page upon page of notes. Words ran off the lines, and continued through the margins, most too minuscule or smudged to be legible. Multiple times, the Commander’s name was scratched in between sentences, angry obsessive markings that made your eyes sting. But you kept skimming, letting your hand be guided along. 

Until suddenly the pages stopped turning. 

And you stared down in horror. 

In the awful, disgusting script, was your name circled, underlined and bolded at the top of the paper. Thin, curving, inked arrows drew lines across the other mismatched text and you slapped a hand over your mouth to stifle the grating, garbled sound that threatened to escape your chest. 

There, the words stood out clear as day among the mess of lines.  

Bond. 

Your brain hadn’t even begun to register the implications of this, but you knew. 

This was the answer you’d been searching for. 

And you had no time to process it, because footsteps from the hall were approaching, quick and hard soled. Your eyes went wide and you scrambled to close the drawer and shove the book into your jacket pocket. Knees tearing on the carpet, you tucked yourself into the space under the desk and held your breath. 

Silence rang out in the tiny room. 

From outside, you heard the footsteps grow louder, closer, and finally come to a halt right in the doorway. 

Taglist lovelies: @couldntfuckingtellya @contesa-lui-alucard @thewilddingleberries @isaxhorror @cowboy-kylo @findyourdarkness @kit-jpg @shesakillerkween @obsessionprofessional

[tessiete]

"I wish you would write a —" continuation or AU of that scene from away the vapour flew (because I've seen you mention that even your AU's have AU's lol and I'm selfishly hoping you'd consider revisiting that fic and coz I can't let this opportunity pass when this fic literally lives in my mind rent free lol)

Alright! At long last I have figured out what happens next. This is for you, dear thing ❤️❤️❤️ ( @lightasthesun on - or very near thereabouts - your birthday)

LED BY THE WANDERING LIGHT

It starts with a very little thing: a seed.

 It is slipped from the glove of a Republic aid trooper who smiles as he passes it over.

 “From the General of the 212th,” he says. “Don’t know what it is, but I damn near lost the thing on the way over.” 

 “For me?” he asks, and the man nods, his grin growing wider.

 Then he leans in as though commiserating with a friend. “Jetiise sha’bise, lek?”

 “Elek,” agrees Korkie, dubiously, turning the little living pebble between his fingers.

 The trooper grins, and gives him a friendly shove before trotting off back to his ship. Korkie has come down on his aunt’s behalf to oversee the relief efforts, but he is distracted by the seed in his hand. It is flat, and furry, and pleasingly plump. If he squeezes it, he can feel the skin relent and rebound, and if he digs in his nail ever so gently, he can feel the taste of water upon his thumb, and see the pale blush of springtime in the depths of the cut. It is a seed of something, he knows, but of what?

 He places it in the breast pocket of his Academy jacket, and turns his attention back to the work. It is an impressive, and important sight, but his thoughts linger on the seed, and he feels it sit bright and eager against his heart.

 Later, when the supplies have been unloaded, and the aid troopers seen off, when the ceremony of thanks and assurances of neutrality have all been displayed, when he is back in his room at Sundari only hours away from the magtrain ride back to school, he plants the seed in a little pot of black earth, and dampens the soil. It will not grow tonight, but he cannot help but stare at it anyway, waiting in the dark, beneath the stars, so patient.

A week passes, and he is back at the Academy when the mail officer - an upperclassman he’s never met - stops at his place during first meal.

 “Su-su, Kryze!” he calls. “A package for you from the Core.”

 A small bundle wrapped in layer upon layer of bonding tape, and stamped with the ink of a hundred spaceports too numerous and cramped to decipher lands upon his lap. He uses the thin knife from his plate to slice through the plastifibe envelope. 

 When his fingers graze the object within he gasps, and pulls back the wrap to reveal a real, proper book. It’s not even printed on flimsi, he notes, cracking the aged spine and letting the pages fall open, but on actual paper. They don’t make these in the Core, and hardly ever in the Mid Rim, it’s just not economical, and most planets don’t have the resources to spare. But this one is old, it’s pages creased, and worn smooth at the corners with the turning of many fingers. It is about horticulture, though the illustrations of green and growing things have faded to browns and burnished golds. It is beautiful. 

 A piece of dried grass has been tucked between two pages, and when Korkie folds them back to look he sees an image of the seed he’d sown in the pot by his bed. Beside it, a riotous bouquet of blossoms burst in an array of different colours. It is a daesyn flower.

He tucks the book in his kebisebag, and carries it around for the rest of the day. At nightfall, he takes it out with careful reverence, turning the pages back to the daesyn slowly lest they tear or turn to dust. Then, by the light of a little glowrod, he props the book against his window and reads along as he tends to the small green sprout only just peeking through the soil.

 He buys a sun lamp, and a watermeter, and adjusts the temperature of his quarters much to Amis’ chagrin, determined to provide the most optimal growing conditions he can for the little plant.

  After a month, the seedling has become a sturdy sprout, with prickly leaves of a green so deep it might be blue. He is attempting to commit those variegated lines to flimsi when Amis returns to their quarters, a small pouch swinging from his hand.

 “I’m supposed to give this to you,” he says, tossing the pouch. Korkie reacts without thinking, snatching the bag out of the air before it can hit the ground.

 “Who’s it from?”

 “Front desk. Said some high up Republic alor sent it.”

 “Which one?”

 “Don’t know. Didn’t ask, did I? Too busy polishing the silver.”

 Korkie grimaces in sympathy, having spent many an afternoon of his first year cleaning the trophy case in the main hall. He thinks that Amis’ plight could be easily avoided if only he behaved himself, but refrains from saying so to his friend.

 Instead, he pulls the drawstring at the top of the purse, and turns it over his hand. A dozen discs of coloured glass tumble into his palm. They are thick, and smooth, though not polished by anything but time. Each is a different colour, though some are struck through with shimmers of gold and silver. 

 “What’s that?” asks Amis over his shoulder.

 “Don’t know,” he echoes. The glass feels comfortable in his grip. Made to be held, and carried, and passed from hand to hand.

 “Should ask Lagos,” says Amis. “That seems like her kind of thing.”

 He makes no reply to Amis, but of course, he does as he suggests. Lagos is, after all, a walking encyclopaedia, and of all their friends the most likely to at least have an idea of where to start looking.

 The excitement on her face when Korkie shows her his hoard tells him she has more than an idea - she knows.

 “Oh, oh, oh!” she gasps. “Where’d you find Abafar trading beads?”

 “They were a gift,” he replies. “What are they for?”

 She picks them up one at a time and holds them to the light. By some trick of their design, they cast no shadow, but seem to capture the rays inside like banked embers, or twisting prisms. The ones marked with ribbons of ore grow warm in her hand, and she presses them to his cheek so he can feel their heat.

 “They’re the traditional currency of Abafar,” she explains. “It’s a desert planet in the Outer Rim, and craftsmen in the Void used to make these beads as a means of facilitating trade over great distances. Metal was scarce, and the beads could also be used to retain heat for longer - that one in your hand could keep the warmth of the sun all night, if you wanted it to.”

 He considers the disc of deep indigo, and holds it up to the sun until it turns red. The glass seems to have become molten, but its warmth is not painful in the hand. He leaves the bead out for the rest of the afternoon to test Lagos’ theory, and brings it into bed with him at night. Tucked beneath his pillow, it radiates a soothing heat, and he feels his muscles relax and his worries melt as he drifts away into an easy slumber.

   The next gift he receives is shattered into bits.

 “Sorry, kid,” says the attendant at the delivery depot when he arrives to claim his parcel. “Happens sometimes with these packages from the front. The war is not a safe place for fragile things. Bic cuyir meg bic cuyir.”

 He takes the present anyway, carrying it delicately back to the Academy, fearful of breaking it further. When he finally tears through the tape and plastifibe, clay and ceramplast pieces give up any pretense at form and clatter over the surface of his desk.

 It was beautiful once, he can tell. Perhaps a bowl or a cup turned by hand - he can see the telltale print of a foreign finger pressed into a section of naked clay - but now it is only fragments and dust.

 Still, he hovers over the pile, turning the pieces this way and that, trying to see how they fit together. He doesn’t notice when sixth bell rings, or when Soniee pings his comm, or when Amis sneaks in past curfew and turns out his light. He stays up late into the night, until the form takes shape, and through the cracks and crevasses of painted clay dawn creeps in.

 It is an amphoriskos. A small vessel for storing precious oils, like the kind used in the rituals of so many traditional peoples. There is none in it now, and Korkie retrieves the sachet to see if perhaps it was spilled into the weave of the plastifibe wrap. But it is dry. And the clay, when he looks at it more closely, is dry and unstained by use. The gift was always empty.

 The shards sit upon his desk in their loose arrangement until, one afternoon, Amis moves to sweep them off into the dustbin.

 “No, no!” protests Korkie, before Amis can complete the task. “I want to keep it.”

 “What for?” his friend asks. “It’s broken.”

 “I don’t know yet.”

 He collects the bits of amphoriskos into his hands, and arranges them about the base of his daesyn pot. The paint glints in the light, and so too do the Abafar beads nestled amidst the debris. The plant grows green and bushy, its leaves reaching out to skim the rim of its bed as though a swimmer poised on the edge of emersion.

He receives Theelin singing strings wound tight around a holodrive meant for the Duchess, paired basalt spindles from Hapes, seashells from the deep oceans of Mon Cala, and a set of Lateron hoops carried on the wrist of the visiting senator from Naboo.

 “From Master Kenobi,” she says, and she smiles at him with a warmth that feels like family. He wonders if they’ve met before, if he should know her, but she moves along with the entourage of press and government officials before he can ask.

 He is home for Holyrod month, and has brought his prizes with him carried along specially in his kebisebag, his daesyn in his hands. He sets them out along the windowsill in his rooms at Sundari. The watchet blues and greens of crystalline filtered light play over his collection, illuminating one after the other in joyous turn. He does not know what they mean, or why his father has sent these particular things to him, but they are all precious, and he longs for a way to display his gratitude for the thought he has been spared.

 The daesyn itself revels in its new surroundings, and leans close to the glass to get as close a view of the sun as it can, budding with imminent delight.

The Senator from Naboo is called Padme, he discovers when he is introduced to her again at mealtime. And she has not come alone. She is part of a delegation of foreign ambassadors, all from the Republic, but not all, Korkie suspects, as enthusiastic about the Chancellor as they had once been. There are murmurings and whispers amongst them, hurried out between thin lips and caught only in the corner of his eye, or the turn of his head, but whether satisfied or not, they are accompanied by the ceremonial force of the Senate, and the might of Palpatine himself - Two Jedi travel with them.

 Anakin Skywalker, and Obi-Wan Kenobi.

 He sees him through the crush of bodies, and later down the line at suppertime. In the midst of deep blues, and mauves, and furs, and silks, his earthen tunics stand out, but he is always distant, always just out of reach. All he needs is a moment, he thinks, to make sure he’s seen, so he can acknowledge his father - even in the polite, and suitably respectful language of perfect strangers if he must, but it never comes. 

The plates are cleared, the halls are emptied, and Korkie finds himself bidding his aunt (she is always his aunt here) goodnight, and wandering back to his rooms alone.

 It is dark when he arrives, though by the window the Abafar beads glow like the distant lights of the city. He slips off his stiff shoes, and his raiments of clan, but is interrupted by a knock at the door. He waits, uncertain, until the knock comes again.

 Perhaps his mother come to assure herself of his health and presence, as she has done so often in the past, but he opens the door to find Obi-Wan Kenobi waiting, with his hand out. In the euphoric rush of astonishment, he hastens to place his own hand upon his father’s as is customary on Stewjon, though he holds fast in a manner peculiar between children and their parents.

 “Master Kenobi,” he stammers. “I did not expect you. I thought you’d left. Forgive me.”

 “There is nothing to forgive,” Obi-Wan replies. “I’d rather hoped to catch you alone, but I’m afraid our schedule was somewhat packed.”

“Of course.”

He is staring, he knows it, but he can’t seem to think of anything else to say, caught up in looking at his father and searching for all the commonalities between them. Does he tilt his head like that? Does he stroke his chin? Does he frown and smile by equal measure?

But the weight of his scrutiny is too much to bear, and Obi-Wan cracks.

“I thought to ask: did you get my gifts?”

“Yes,” says Korkie. “Thank you. They were very thoughtful.”

“Ah...And did you - did you like them?”

At this, Korkie cannot help but smile, and he shakes his father’s hand, tugging him forward with zeal.

“Yes, of course,” he says. “Would you like to see?”

If he is confused by his son’s desire to reintroduce him to items he has already laboured over and seen, then he does not show it. Nor does he resist when the hand in his pulls him further into the room, and doesn’t let go even as a curtain is flung open, and a light flicked on low.

He is pulled over to the broad casements and left to bask in starlight as Korkie steps aside to reveal a colorful mobile hanging from the frame of his window.

“The amphoriskos broke,” he explains, and sees a shadow flicker in his father's eyes. “No, no,” he insists. “It wasn’t your fault. It just happened. But I couldn’t bear to throw it away. It was so beautiful.”

He gestures at a silver thread from which hang a variety of irregularly shaped clay shards. The shiny amber and black paint catches the light thrown by the glowing Abafar beads strung further up, and on another and another thread. When he blows on them the threads hum, and sway together, the seashells and pottery and glass clattering together like wind chimes.

“The singing strings,” notes Obi-Wan, and Korkie grins.

“And the Lateron hoops,” he says, pointing to the frame from which the strings are suspended. “And the spindles, for balance. It’s meant to hang with my window open, like it is at school. And then, at night, when the dreamwinds come, the whole thing sings, and shines, and glows like the stars.”

“It’s beautiful,” says Obi-Wan with awe. He reaches out with one hesitant finger, the beads flickering beneath his touch, and the strings murmuring the low notes of an opening phrase.

“You gave it to me,” says Korkie with a shrug, and Obi-Wan turns his awe upon his boy.

“No,” he says. “I gave you fragments, but you have made them into art. You gave them meaning. You gave them a soul.”

Korkie shifts on his feet, fretting at the cuff of his sleeve, and diving in.

“Would it be okay, do you think -” he starts, then stops. Then he starts again. “Do you think it’d be alright if I wrote you? Every once in a while.”

“Wrote me?”

“Or com’d,” he says, quickly. “Only I know you’re busy, and I can’t expect to lay claim to any of your time, not really, but I -”

“Com me,” says Obi-Wan. “Write me. Send me anything you like, but only say you will and I will have all the time for you I can spare.”

“I promise that I only want a very little.”

“If it’s mine to give it’s yours to have, Kiorkicek,” his father swears. His grip upon his hand is firm, willing him to believe him, and Korkie nods his head because he does.

They stand there, hand in hand, reading themselves in each other, and learning the other in turn, and in the glow of the stars, and the city, and the Abafar beads, the daesyn flower bursts from its roots into a riot of colour and life.

[roselightfairy]

A ficlet from last week, prompted by @deheerkonijn based on a cozy headcanon we love: Legolas makes Gimli comfort food after a bad day at work. (Also containing a very specific Easter egg referring to another one of my headcanons, because...I can.)

...

Gimli’s head ached.

He rubbed absently at the back of his neck where the twinge had begun this morning, though he knew already that it was too little, too late. The ache had climbed throughout the day, twining up the base of his skull like ivy and sending shoots curling in all directions. Now his heartbeat throbbed hollowly throughout his skull – or perhaps that was merely the remembered echo of falling hammers.

His probing fingers provided half an instant of relief before one of them nudged the clasp that secured his tight work braid, knocking it askew. Now the braid listed to the left, the right side tugging hard at his scalp. The strands at his hairline felt moments from snapping off, each one sending a new stab to join the existing headache.

Gimli’s chest tightened as he smothered a low growl in his throat.

He should have known it would be such a day as soon as he woke with the ache in his neck, should have merely nestled deeper into Legolas’s arms and gone back to sleep. But no – he had let his foolish pride coax him out of bed and down to the work-site in the hopes that lively chatter and shared enthusiasm would lift his spirits.

There were days when that would have been true, when ideas flowed so easily between all the dwarves at work that they seemed to be thinking in synchronization, when the surge of energy and creativity bore them practically aloft. On those days, the hours flew by and Gimli could work late into the night, excitement replacing the need for sleep, the joy in the project all he needed to sustain him –

And then there were days like today.

Gimli veered right down the hall that led towards his chambers, glaring as he did at the boards and ropes blocking off another entrance to his left. The expansion of that hall, meant to connect eventually to the passage that they were working now, had been the subject of today’s controversy; Narin – who insisted on remaining an unsanded edge, even after years of work here – had put in yet another bad-faith objection to Gimli’s plans, without anything substantive to replace it. Thankfully, Alma had been there to challenge him first, but she seemed to be taking far too much pleasure in antagonizing Narin these days and they might have come to blows had Gimli not stepped in. Such an altercation was bound to sour the mood of the whole team, and they had never managed to find that easy synchronized motion that the delicate work of opening new caverns required.

At last, Gimli found himself at the base of the spiral staircase that led up to the lord’s hall – but the stairs seemed to stretch up into infinity. He glowered at them, but as they neglected to flatten themselves in deference to his mood, he let out a heavy sigh and began to trudge up the steps.

Each step sent a new spike of pain through his head, and his shoulders were aching to match by the time he finally reached the double doors to his own chambers.  But – at least he would not be returning to an empty home.

…

Legolas was curled in the window seat, humming under his breath and toying with a bit of string, when he heard the doors open. His heart jumped a little in his chest – still, after so many years, Gimli’s arrival home was enough to make his breath catch – and a smile broke unbidden over his face. But it faded a moment later when Gimli’s arrival was followed by a thump and a muffled curse.

Legolas leaped up, the knots of his miniature snare forgotten, and crossed the sitting room in two steps, the string still dangling from his hand. The scuffling noises from the entry hall continued as Legolas pushed aside the screen that separated the rooms. There he saw Gimli braced against the door, struggling to pull off one of his boots and looking on the verge of frustrated tears.

“Gimli!” he exclaimed, hardly noting the string falling from his fingers. “What is wrong?” He was rushing forward without waiting for an answer, his hands fluttering helplessly out towards Gimli’s shoulders.

Gimli’s head snapped up at his words, then sagged just as quickly.  “Nothing,” he said, a little sheepish. “It is only – my bootlaces have knotted and I was struggling to untie them.  Forgive me for disturbing you; I would have managed it eventually.”

“The most fearful enemy indeed,” teased Legolas gently.  “Doubtless you would have managed, but to your fortune, I have been practicing my knotwork.  Let us see if this foe is a match for me.”  He sank to his knees at Gimli’s feet and bent over the offending boot.

The knot had drawn tight indeed, but Legolas had undone more stubborn tangles before. He probed at the snarl for a moment, seeking the loop where the knot had gone wrong – and there it was! A few tugs and it loosened and unlocked beneath his fingers, and from there it was a simple matter of pulling the laces free. “Ah ha!” he exclaimed triumphantly, pulling the boot away.

“My savior,” Gimli sighed, but Legolas had only a moment to bask in his smile before it fell away from his face once more.

It was more than just the shoe, then. “Come, what ails you?” said Legolas, rising back to his feet and resting his hands on Gimli’s shoulders.  The muscles beneath his fingers felt hard as stone, even beneath the thick leather of his apron.

“It is nothing, really,” said Gimli, though he let out a deep sigh when Legolas lifted the apron away to hang it up. “No one thing, anyway. Everything just” – He huffed and scrubbed a hand over his head – “seemed to go wrong today.”

“Come sit,” Legolas said, returning his hands to Gimli’s shoulders and probing at the muscles, “and you can tell me about it.”

Gimli pulled the clasp out of his hair as they walked into the sitting room, burying his hands in his braid and fluffing it out with quick rough motions that teased the hair up high above his head without undoing the braid.  Legolas batted his hands away – he would only tie his hair into knots next at that rate – and finger-combed through each section of the braid from the bottom up as they settled themselves into the window seat, Gimli leaning back against Legolas’s chest.  “I should have stayed in bed this morning,” Gimli grumbled.  “We are no nearer completion than we were before, since certain people feel the need to argue over every small detail.”

Certain people could only refer to one person – the most frequent cause of Gimli’s ire. “Narin?” Legolas guessed.

“If he were not so talented, I would demote him,” Gimli confirmed. “I do not understand it – sometimes I think he makes trouble only for the sake of mischief.  And Alma was no better today. The two of them are at one another’s throats constantly lately; I wonder if I should separate them!”

Legolas merely hummed, pressing his fingers into the base of Gimli’s skull until Gimli let out a groan of satisfaction.  He had always loathed the task of mediating conflict between members of his own unit and could offer no advice – but Gimli never wanted advice at times like this, only a listening ear.

“And Bjolla was unable to work today,” Gimli was continuing, “so her apprentice replaced her, and his hands are nowhere near as steady as hers, so everyone was waiting for him – and on top of that my head has ached all day.”

“I can see that,” murmured Legolas, scraping the pads of his fingers up from Gimli’s neck to cup the back of his head. Gimli’s hair twined between his fingers, course and thick, slightly damp with sweat, the smell of stone dust and leather rising into the air. “And it is no wonder. I am sorry you have had such a trying day, my love. Can I make you tea – and shall I request food from the kitchens?”

“If you would” – Gimli’s tone held the slightest wheedle, one that always melted Legolas’s resistance before he even knew what was being requested.  “Would you cook for me? Your venison stew?”

The ball of warmth began in Legolas’s chest and expanded so swiftly outward that yet again he could not hold back a beam. “Of course!”  Legolas was no skilled cook, but venison stew was one of the few dishes he was proud of – a meal that had always brought him comfort since his own childhood. And he had brought all that he needed from Ithilien, planning to make it during his visit anyway. There was no greater compliment Gimli could give him than this – asking for him to cook, affirming that Legolas’s aid could bring him comfort. “With pleasure.”

…

Gimli curled up on the couch while Legolas cooked, snug in a cocoon of blankets with a goblet of wine at his side, a gift from Legolas from Ithilien’s pressing. This year’s wine was particularly fresh-tasting, and Gimli savored the light bite of it over the rich scent of venison and wild onions beginning to pervade the room.

This was better by far than asking for food to be sent to his chambers – feeling the warmth of the stove seep from the kitchen into the sitting room, inhaling the scent of Legolas’s cooking and knowing that his husband was taking such care with his comfort. Gimli took another sip of his wine and felt himself – at last – beginning to relax.

“Here.” Legolas appeared in the entry from the kitchen, his hair piled in an absurdly precarious knot on top of his head, his eyes bright.  He carried a steaming spoon held over a tiny dish, crossing the room with mincing steps to keep from spilling, and presented it to Gimli.  “Taste.”

Gimli leaned forward and inhaled deeply, letting the scent swirl in his nose before cautiously sipping the hot broth from the spoon.  He nearly groaned aloud at the taste – exactly what he had wanted.

“Well?” said Legolas.  “What does it need?”

“Hmm.” Gimli smiled, too tired to truly think, but knowing what to say anyway. “Pepper.”

It was his standard answer, meant to indicate that he noticed nothing missing, and Legolas laughed aloud.  “Of course,” he said.  “How could I have expected anything else?” He gave a little bow, craning his neck forward at the end to drop a kiss onto Gimli’s brow. “As my lord commands.”

Gimli smiled as Legolas withdrew and scampered into the kitchen, his loose bundle of hair bobbing on his head and shedding wisps. “It will be ready in moments!” Legolas called from the other room, and Gimli leaned back into his pillows and helped himself to another sip of wine.  Already his headache was receding.

Perhaps it was not too late for the day to be redeemed.

[di-kut]

Morning

Pero Tovar x Reader 

A/N: I am again writing Tovar to avoid writing other things. Set in the same world as this, a small (meant to be) oneshot I wrote on my main blog, but much earlier in time. Reader and Tovar wake up after their second night together. They talk. Things are weird. I don’t really know what this is except I wanted more so here it is. This is very short and unedited. You don’t have to read the other post to read this one. 

The sound of someone moving about the kitchen wakes you. It’s a slow, syrupy sort of wakening. Your eyelids and limbs feel thick and heavy. The blankets are pushed back to your waist. Dust mites float gently through the stream of late morning light in the window. Piece by piece the cottage comes into being. The boots in the corner. The clucking of the hens. More of a scrabbling. You blink slowly. The kitchen has gone quiet again.

The night before settles in your mind. You push yourself upright, throw off the covers. Turn your head to the boots again and the heavy leather cuirass. Had thought they were your husband’s, still half asleep. Realise now how they could not possibly have been. Your legs shake when you touch your feet to the ground. Makes you flush, from your hairline to your breasts. The bruises are constellations on your thighs and your stomach. Around your nipples. The shape of his mouth. The soldier. Tovar. You hear things being shifted in the kitchen again. Hear the hens, the scratching, still stuck in their pen. The sun is climbing well above the trees, the sky a bright, brilliant blue. You have not slept so late in months.

You dress with shaking hands. Your head feels full of wool and your mouth dry. You did not drink ale. Had never drunk ale. Until last night. Until the soldier you had only met once, and now bedded twice, had bought it to you. From England, he’d said. Your hair is so tangled you give up braiding it, listen to the sounds of the stranger digging through your things. Through your life. Think of the meagre purse of coin in the drawer with the cutlery. Your dress is the same one you had worn yesterday. Cotton. Used to be a pretty blue, one of your favourites, now threadbare and faded. Piled under the arms and around the neck. You wrap the woollen shawl over it, high around your neck despite the warmth. A necessary protection. Make your way to the kitchen.

He is sitting at your table. Elbows crowded around his plate, legs splayed beneath. Wearing his trousers and his undershirt, but not his armour. His dark eyes find you immediately, knowing and unreadable. His scar pulls at his left eye as he eats, rips the bread with thick fingers and shoves it into his mouth. Smiles when he sees you. It isn’t a particularly nice smile – certainly not friendly. A secret smile, a knowing one. One that makes you flush pink all over again. You lean in the small doorway, unsure. Feel displaced in your own house, feel like he seems more at home here than you do. And maybe it’s true. You certainly haven’t felt as if you belonged in the cottage in months. You envy him. At ease in a place he does not know. Think it must be his life to live like that, from place to place. Feel suddenly very small and very childish in your small corner of the world.

“Sit,” he says to you.

You hesitate. Lean back slightly into the small bedroom and then step out. The floor is stone in the main part of the house, and cool even in the warm summer. Makes you curl your toes as you walk and settle into the stool across from him. Wince when you sit too hard.

He does not miss it. His smile grows, from secretive to smug. “Be careful, yes?” He doesn’t expect an answer, but you nod anyway. “Here, eat.”

You take the large piece of bread he rips off for you gingerly. Hold it over the table in front of you and watch him. He bites into his. He is not gentle, or well mannered. Crumbs fall all around him. Your eyes drop to his mouth, the same mouth which had last night been between your legs. Had called you beautiful. He chuckles. It draws your gaze back up. You go red again and bite into the bread, look away from him completely.

“You are shy. You look at me. You did more than look last night.” You can’t meet his eyes. Stare at a knot in the wood of the tabletop. He laughs again. “Very shy. Your husband does not do such things?”

“I – No.” You swallow. “My husband did not… He never…”

Tovar pushes the rest of the bread towards you. “You must ask him to do this. It makes it much more enjoyable for you, yes?” You are glad he does not expect an answer, this time, because you can make none. You are so flushed it makes you almost dizzy. “Best not to say to him where you get this idea from. He may not like that.”

“My husband is dead.” You say. Still staring at the knot in the wood. “He died when the attacks came from the east. Last summer.”

Tovar is quiet. You risk a glance. He is watching you still, but the smile is gone. He looks almost – pensive. Like he is lingering between two thoughts. He does not say sorry. He does not offer you any condolences. And it makes you guilty, but you are glad. Do not wish to hear anymore pity or second-hand sadness. He just watches you with his dark eyes. You take another small bite from the bread he’d given you. The bread he had brought with him from the inn in town when he’d followed you in the dusk back to your cottage. The bread you had watched him take from the bag of another man, a traveller with a velvet doublet and silk undershirt. It is very good bread. Filled with dried fruits and nuts. You push yourself up carefully and cross to the small chest of drawers. Pull the top drawer open and pretend to search for a knife. Stick your hand in far enough to pick up the purse which is still there and test its weight in your palm. Return it and pull out a long, serrated knife for the bread. Sit back at the table across from him.

He grins at you. “I did not steal your coin.”

You slice a piece and nibble at the side of it. Disappointed. Thought you had been more subtle than that. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“You do. And you are wise to check this.”

You say nothing to him. Continue to eat until you cannot anymore, and you push the last of it back to the middle of the table. Tovar takes it without another word and wraps it again in the wax paper it had been stolen in. Places it on the wide bench at the side of the room. Picks up one of the rags slung over the edge of the beam beneath it and wipes the crumbs onto the floor, nudges your arms off the surface of the table so he can wipe it over. You watch him, surprised. Had not expected him to show such care.

You need to let the hens out. To check the gardens. You had planted a bed too early in the winter and it had failed, and the rest you had planted too late. Had let the winter vegetables sit for too long before harvesting them. Had not turned the soil in preparation for summer. And now you were behind. You had not grown up on a farming property, and what you had learned from your husband you had never expected to have to do alone. Had expected to be able to afford to keep on your manservant. Had expected children. Had expected him to live longer. You rub at your brow and move into the bedroom to ready yourself. Don’t know how to ask Tovar to leave. Not sure you trust him in the cottage alone.

Tovar joins you while you dress, does not comment when you turn your back to him, pulling on your apron and attempting to tame your hair into a braid. Have to comb it for some time. He watches you openly. Pulls on his boots while you struggle with the knots. Watches your hands while you braid. Stares at the bruises trailing the length of your neck and jaw, phantom touches left behind, a trail from your ear to your nipple, disappearing beneath your dress. Does not seem to care that this embarrasses you. If anything he seems to enjoy it more because you squirm under his heavy gaze.

“I am going. I must go back to the camp.”

You nod without looking to him. Concentrate on tying the scarf around your hair.

“You will be sore today,” he says. As if this means nothing. As if he is simply observing something. And he is, you suppose. But it makes your stomach twist up and your thighs ache at the memory of him between them the night before. “You should not work too hard.”

The question tumbles out before you can stop it. Before you have even registered the thought. Not jealous. Not exactly. Curious. Scared. This is a world you have never known before this man, this soldier. A world you did not explore even with your husband. Are not allowed to talk about.

“Is that normal?” You frown.

“Hurting? Some types of hurting, these are good. Should not be a bad hurting.”

“No, I – ” You pick at your nailbed. “Not hurting. When, when you, with your mouth. You have done that before? With others?”

“Yes.”

“Oh.”

And the whole things makes you feel childish again. Silly and small. He is surprisingly kind. His is not laughing at you any longer. “This thing. Knowing these things. This is easier for men, because we are not blamed to seek these flesh comforts. But you should not feel bad for learning them. If they make you feel good.” He shrugs. “This way you can find many more things you like which will make you feel good.”

“There are more ways?”

He does laugh at this. “Many ways.”

“My husband, he never…” You cut yourself off. Horrified you would bring him up with this man, like this. Different to explaining his absence. Comparing them. You clamp your mouth shut. Tovar crosses to you and lays a hot, large hand over your shoulder. “How long are you staying in town?”

“I do not know. A week, maybe. And then we will go east again. This is how my life is.”

He sounds pleased with this. You do not ask him if you will see him again. He pulls his armour over his head and straps it around his torso. Collects his sword from where it leans. You walk him through the kitchen and into the stable, a wooden shack built against the stone wall of the cottage. His horse is mottled white and brown. Makes your mule skittish. You stay with him until he leads the mare out through your yard and into the fields surrounding. Far enough out of town that there are no people to watch him go. Close enough that you can hear the distant clamour of the regiment of army overflowing the village. You close the gate between you.

“Do you worry you will die?” You ask as he swings onto his mount.

“We will all die.” He says simply. “This is why we do the things which bring us pleasure.”

[tloujm]

Part VII: I’m Right Here

Author’s Notes: WARNING! Rated V for violence and gore. Timeline wise, this takes place roughly a month after the last part, so it is still Winter. 

Genre: Angst followed by fluff

Summary: Tommy plays matchmaker and convinces you and Joel to go out scavenging together. The two of you run into danger that leaves you traumatized. It also leaves you questioning life and how Joel fits in it.

Ship: Joel x Reader

Despite having had your big girl chat with Joel, the two of you had yet to set a day to begin guitar lessons. One day, the two of you run into each other at The Watering Hole. Before he visited you that night, you would have slipped back out the front door, but this time you let him approach you.

“Hey.”

“Hi.”

“Have you, um, gotten around to changing the strings?” He asked. You found the topic random.

“On the guitar?” You asked.

“No, the ukulele. The guitar should be good until next year. 

“I didn’t know I was supposed to.” You said obliviously.

“Yeah...you, um...I’ll get you some new ones one day.” Joel said. It was at this point, Tommy had spotted you two talking in the corner. He walked up to you guys.

“Big brother. (Y/N)” He nodded to the both of you. This was the first time that he’d seen you two talking in a year. Joel had confided in Tommy about the talk you two had on the porch. He wanted to see for himself how things were going between you two. He strongly believed that you were good for him and he wanted to see the two of you together again. “So, what are we talking about?”

“Apparently, I have to change the strings on my instruments every so often.” You shrugged.

“Oh yeah. Maintenance and all that. Joel can show you how to do that.” Awkward glances were exchanged. “Hey, there’s this music store, Riley and ‘em found it last week, on one of the northeast routes. It probably has supplies you’re interested in. There should be strings and...other guitar stuff.” Tommy lightly hit Joel’s shoulder to pull him into the conversation.  “What’s some other guitar stuff she might need?”

Joel glared at Tommy before scratching the back of his head. “Um, you may want a clip or maybe a strap. They might have a case for your ukulele.”

“That sounds nice.” You commented flatly. You knew what Tommy was trying to do. 

It fell silent, so Tommy had to pick up the conversation again. “That area is long overdue for a sweep anyway.” He bounced a pointed glare between the two of you.

Joel looked up at you. “What do you say, (Y/N)? It’d be like old times.”

You shrugged nonchalantly. “Why not.” Tommy plastered a huge smile on his face.

“Tommy! You’re next.” The barman yelled.

“And that’s my cue. Nice talkin’ to y’all.” Tommy tipped the imaginary hat on his head before walking off. You watched as Tommy set up to sing karaoke at the front of the room.

*******

The ride to the area was mostly done in silence. Joel didn’t know what to say in fear of saying the wrong thing. You weren’t sure if you wanted him to even say anything at all. The two of you found a fairly large sinkhole in the ground in front of the music store, so Joel suggested cutting through a hotel across the street from it. As you approached it, you noticed that one of entrances was barricaded by debris from the outside. The two of you stood there to assess the damage. Joel walked up to a pile of fallen roofing and lifted it up as far as he could. You took it as your cue to crawl through. It was a tight squeeze, causing you to practically slither in on your belly. 

You quickly scanned the room to make sure there were no infected before dusting yourself off. You found yourself in what used to be the dining area. The wood furniture was rotted and everything was covered in a thick layer of dust. You shouted out to Joel, letting him know that you’d made it through ok. He replied by saying that he would meet you at the main entrance. By the time you made it to the double grand doors, he was already waiting outside. This time, the entrance was barricaded from the inside. You hopped up several times to unlatch the locks at the top of the doors. Finally, they were released from the metal bolts and you opened them to find Joel leaning his arm up against the frame of the door. His ankles were crossed. His whole posture suggested that he was trying to be cool and relaxed, contrary to how he usually was outside of Jackson’s safe walls. You expected to find him standing there, body tense and face rigid, something you grew familiar with when he was in survival mode. 

“Well, hello there.” You greeted. Joel recognized a trace of flirtation in your voice. You heard it too. It just came out like that, so you decided to roll with it. You opened the door wider and welcomed him into the hotel as if it wasn’t a dilapidated mess.

“Howdy.” He replied simply. As if he was the coolest man in the world, he strode. right past you with a half smile donning his face. 

You breathed a chuckle. “You’re welcome.”

The two of you walked on for a while. Despite never having been in the hotel before, Joel knowing of its existence was enough for you to let him lead the way. While he was navigating, you were taking your time. Old buildings always interested you. Your flashlight shined on framed pictures and flyers posted on the wall.

“I think I see a way through,” Joel began. You turned to find him all the way down the hall. “But there’s spores.” You jogged to catch up. He was standing in front of a large hole in the wall blocked by a filing cabinet. He put on his mask, then waited for you to do the same. “Put your mask on, (Y/N).

“It’s just us, Joel.”

“What if we run into someone.” He stated firmly. The irony of living through the bite of an infected is that it can prove life threatening if a human found out.

“Fine.” He watched as you slid the mask in place over your head.

“You haven’t told anybody new, have you? You’re friends?” He asked. 

“No, of course not.” You answered.

Joel was protective of your secret but he couldn’t help but feel a bit jealous as well. He knew that his relationship with you would be less special if others knew as much as he did. He discreetly cherished being the only one who knew certain things about you. You were kind of offended when he asked, though. You agreed a long time ago that it should be kept a secret, so why would he think that you would slip up like that? 

The two of you made it through a room of Clickers, slaying them with ease as a team. Joel walked ahead of you into the next section of the hotel. You followed as he squeezed through a narrow space between the walls. Suddenly, you heard a deep roar before Joel completely disappeared. You screamed out his name. It happened so fast. You flashed your light through the newly made hole in the wall. Through it, you saw that Joel was snatched by a Bloater. For a moment, you were frozen. It was the first time you’d seen a Bloater up close. You’d heard stories about them and you’d even seen one roaming around with the scope that Tommy gifted you. It was the most disgusting thing you’d ever seen.

With a rush of adrenaline through your veins, you pulled out your gun. All the shots did was distract it from Joel. It was faster and stronger than you thought. The confidence that you usually had from being immune quickly faded. You soon realized how small the enclosed room was as you were running away from the thing. Joel did the same and shot at the 7 foot fungal mass as it began to throw spore bombs at you. They did nothing but blind you for a moment. It soon stopped attacking you and switched back it's attention to Joel. He was too slow and the Bloater grabbed a hold of his neck. It looked like it wanted to tear his head off of his body. You screamed his name again before unsheathing your katana. You got a running head start and tried to slice the monstrosity down. You tried your best to imitate the master swordsmen you’d seen in samurai movies, but the flesh was too thick. You glanced toward Joel as he struggled. Veins were popping up around his neck and temples. He was trying his hardest to loosen the Bloater’s grip, but nothing he did helped. You threw the graceful swings to the wind and started hacking at the Bloater like a butcher. It wasn’t the best knife to do so with, but it was better than the dagger on your right hip. The arm holding Joel’s neck fell to the ground after your blade sliced through it. The Bloater began to falter which exposed it's other arm for you to chop off. Joel was finally released from it's grasp. He fell to his knees as you maintained focus on the monster. You continued to frantically slice and chop at any angle you could get at until it fell down on its back. You took the handle of your katana in both hands and drove it straight down into the heart of the beast. Blood and spores splattered all around you. It exuded a low roar. Still, you continued.

Joel had finally regained his strength and cautiously approached you. At this point, you had moved on to it's head and tried to cut through it's thick neck. Joel placed a hand on your shoulder as if to tell you to stop, but you carried on. He called out your name in a raspy voice. Finally, you stopped and dropped your arm to your side. You let out a shaky breath as he turned you around to face him. Through his mask, Joel glanced you up and down to make sure you were alright. Your eyes were crazed and blood was painted across your whole body like a Jackson Pollock painting. 

“C’mon.” Was all he said. The two of you walked out of the room and didn’t stop until you made it to a room where the spores were clear. You pushed Joel down onto a couch and ripped his mask off to look him over. “I’m fine, darlin’.”

You disregarded his comment and continued to look for signs of injury. “Joel, you almost died.” You made sure he was looking into your eyes when you said that. Your crouched down in front of him and held steady onto his knees. “I could have lost you.” You thought back to the lyrics of that song he sang that night in your living room. 

You thought about how living in the comfort of a fortified settlement led you to take the time you had with him for granted. You knew that life was still dangerous. Joel risked his life everyday to go out and patrol. What if he was alone or with someone less experienced in melee combat. He could have died before you had a chance to forgive him. He could have died and you would have never been able to express all of the feelings that were lingering in the back of your mind while you were avoiding him. He could have gone out to patrol and never come back. Then where would that have left you? A sense of dread washed through your body as you imagined a life without him. It was a pain you had never sensed before and it was too much to bear. Hot tears began to fall down your face, one after another.

He reached out a calloused hand and rested it gently against your cheek. “I’m here, (Y/N), I’m right here”. You leaned into his hand, a mix of blood and tears rubbing off onto it. “Ain’t nothing a solid night of sleep won’t fix.” He tried to convince you. “How about we call it a day and go get them supplies another time?” You could only nod in response. 

The ride back home felt extra long. The two of you rode up to the stable and left the horses. Joel watched with tired eyes as you walked off in another direction. For a moment, he forgot that the two of you weren’t living together. All he wanted to do was relax and comfort you.

The house was dark when you entered. You didn’t bother turning on any lights as you made your way to the bathroom. You let the hot water steam up the room before getting into the shower. You watched as the blood and dirt slid down your body and circled the drain. You lifted your face and placed it directly under the shower head, wondering if Joel was doing the same. 

Later that night, you fell asleep. A white glow was cast in your room from the moon. Tears began to stream down your face as little whimpers escaped your lips. The memories of earlier that day played in your head but this time you weren’t there to save him. It was frustrating. You could see him getting attacked but something was keeping you from moving. The Bloater clawed at Joel’s face, trying to rip it apart. First, it got past the mask and Joel had no choice but to breathe in spores. You could see the struggle and fear in his face as clear as day. His eyes were bloodshot and veins traveled from his arms, past his neck and up to his forehead. You could feel yourself screaming his name, but the sound did not come out. He couldn’t hear you begging him to fight back. The Bloater got its hands in Joel’s mouth and pulled. You didn’t want to watch, but you couldn’t shut your eyes. The tearing of flesh and cracking of bones mingled with the Bloater’s roar. The disgusting sounds filled your ears as Joel’s head was torn from his body. The monstrous thing carelessly flung it to the side but held on tight to his body with it's other hand. It, then, let out this deep bellow that sent shivers across your body. You felt those shivers as you shot up from your bed. You were beginning to break out in a cold sweat. It was hard for you to breathe. There was this lump in your throat that you couldn’t get past. You threw your legs over the edge of the bed so the cool air could touch your skin. You rocked back and forth while gripping the corner of your mattress. The roar was real. You could still feel the vibrations that it caused in the room. Dread once again washed over you like a veil and your heart ached like never before. The tears spilled out of you as you cried. You wanted to let it all out because it hurt to keep it all in, but crying caused your hyperventilation to worsen. You were stuck and didn’t know what to do about it. The tears kept coming regardless. The only thought that crossed your mind was that you couldn’t save him. The whole thing felt so real that you found yourself confused. Was riding home with Joel the dream? Was the nightmare true? You threw on your shoes and a sweater before leaving your house. It proved not enough as flurries of snow began to fall from the sky. You wrapped the sweater closer to your body and walked down the street. 

Joel never fell asleep. His body was tired, but his mind was wide awake. He drank a couple glasses of cheap whiskey that he traded for a while back in hopes that the buzz would make him dreary. All it did was make his head pound. He preferred coffee to that bottle of whiskey, but the caffeine wouldn’t have helped. He glanced out the window and saw the snow falling down from the night sky. He left the kitchen and decided to light a fire. After letting the wood burn for a moment, Joel made his way to the couch and sank into the cushions. Just as he elevated his feet on the coffee table, he heard a knock on his front door. He let out a weary sigh. He expected it to be Tommy, as he was the only one who would visit so late. He contemplated whether he should feign sleep and ignore it. It can wait ‘til the mornin’, he thought to himself. 

You stood on the other side of his door, waiting for an answer. The shades were drawn, so you couldn’t tell if anyone was in. Waiting out on his dark, cold porch did not help ease your suspicions. You looked at the wooden rocking chair that Joel sat in the night he told you that he would have done it all over again. You remembered that look on his face when he told you. After another moment passed, you brought your hand up to knock again. Just as you did, the door opened. You were face to face with Joel. It was a welcome surprise for the both of you. Without words, Joel moved to the side, allowing you space to come in. You walked all the way in and he followed until you stopped in front of the fireplace. He gazed down at you, waiting for you to say something, do something. You played with your sleeves as you slowly took in his body. It was real. The ride back was real. He was real. 

He could tell that you’d been crying. He was about to ask if you were ok when you closed the space between you two and hugged him. Your arms wrapped tightly around his middle. You laid your ear against his chest to feel his heartbeat. Joel returned the embrace. “I’m here,” He said. Many moments passed before you lifted your head to finally look at his face. He looked directly into your eyes and it was as if he bore into your soul. You gently took his face in your hands before kissing him. At first, it was chaste; a quick and cautious touch. With Joel’s hands still on your waist, he pulled you closer. You took that as an invitation to go deeper. You thrived in the way his lips responded to yours as each successive kiss grew longer.   

[saudadeonly]

burn my heart out: last breath calling out (Chapter 3)

Read on ao3. Part 8, consisting of 4 chapters.

Death Eater!Sirius Black AU

Lord Voldemort wages war on Hogwarts but he is unaware of the years-worth of battle fought against him.

(or, several instalments following the Battle of Hogwarts with Sirius Black standing on the wrong side)

Catching up in the middle of battle shouldn't be as much of an art as Marlene and the others have made it to be.

Word count: 2827

___

Marlene is upon Sirius moments after he's stepped back from James and for several seconds everything else fades away. There is no battle to be fought, no wounds to be healed - only them, two friends properly reuniting after years, and Marlene doesn't want to let go. Even the weight of the encounter with the Dementors seems to have eased.

“It's good to see you,” she mumbles into the dip of his collarbone.

He sounds like ash and dust but he gives her a faint smile when they part. “You too.”

When they completely break away from each other, Gideon's wand is pointed at Sirius's chest, his eyes hard. His crooked fingers, one of the remaining marks left from the torture he and Fabian suffered when they were caught by Death Eaters two years ago, are wrapped so tightly around his wand they've turned white. If Marlene didn't know who did it to him before, she’s sure got her confirmation now. Her heartstrings stretch thin between them, between their different shades of grey.

Sirius lifts his hands placatingly but with no sense of urgency. “I know you intend to keep your promise,” he says in a low voice, brows furrowed down over his eyes, “but you'll have your chance if we live to see the morning.”

“Gideon,” Marlene murmurs, reaching out with feather-light fingers against his arm. The pain inflicted on him was, unlike hers, real but its memory won’t lessen if he kills Sirius – not now, not later.

A muscle in Gideon's jaw ticks. A moment passes, then two, before he jabs his wand into Sirius's chest and lets it drop back down to his side. “This isn't over, Black,” he growls.

Sirius's hands, too, fall. His mouth settles into a grim line. “Believe me, I know.”

The edge of danger in the air around them dulls a little. James looks between Gideon and Sirius and then between Sirius and Marlene. He swallows and runs a shaky hand through his hair. It has to be different now, with the shock wearing off, to try and forget that for all Sirius has done to keep them safe, there is still a path between them that he paved with their pain. Marlene has had months to come to terms with it, to go over every horrible, cruel thing he has done and love him despite it; sometimes even because of it, because of how he poured enough blood out of himself to make up for the lack of theirs. James has had neither the insight nor the time to deal with it and probably won't get either for a while. Marlene doesn't know how to help him or Dorcas and Gideon past it.

Dorcas narrows her eyes at Sirius. She's always kept her words about him sharp and then doubly so when he had them all convinced he was a Death Eater but she remains the only one that has been able to fully separate herself from their shared history and treat him as simply one of them – until the night that, as far as she knew, Sirius went for Marlene. Then her vengeance became a single-minded fury, a driving point honed to precision. With anyone else, it would have been admirable; with Sirius, it became the centre-point of Marlene's helplessness. “The ransom was your idea, wasn't it?” Dorcas asks, eyes flitting between Sirius and Gideon, the brilliant mind that Marlene adores working tenfold.

The sum of money offered by Lucretia and Gideon Prewett in exchange for the lives of their nephews was a bolder offer than anyone had tried to make in the decades of war but perhaps the more surprising fact was that Voldemort accepted it. It couldn't have been anyone else other than Sirius that made him see reason in it.

Sirius studies her for a moment, then nods. “You always were the smartest.”

“And yet I couldn’t figure you out.”

“If only that had been my plan.”

“Thank you,” James says suddenly, breaking through the tension that suffocates down over them, “for the Map.” He presses his mouth into a line, fingers twitching by his side, and then opens it again. “Lily and Harry –”

“Don't tell me anything, James,” Sirius cuts in, turning to look at him with a determined line cut between his eyebrows. “The less I know the better.”

He's right. They all know he's right. It doesn't diminish the pain of the fact that he deserves to know as much as all of them do – even if their own knowledge is scarce.

With a grimace, Sirius reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small leather-bound book, pushing it into James's hands. Marlene catches the edge of an antler pressed into the cover and remembers James's last Christmas gift to Sirius. He jerks his chin at the gash running down the length of Gideon's arm and says, “Lestrange came up with some nasty curses. Try the spell on page seven.” He pulls out his own wand and steps toward Marlene.

This time, it's Dorcas who points her wand at him. “Don't touch her.”

“Dorcas,” Marlene says softly before Sirius can ever open his mouth. She meets her eyes, dark and lovely, and sees the question there, a painful one that neither of them wants to have asked or answered. It's been there longer than it should be, probably since Dorcas cursed Sirius all those months ago and Marlene went to pieces over it. “It's alright.”

Dorcas frowns but nods and lets it go. She watches with sharp eyes and a hand in the pocket where she keeps her wand as Sirius taps the wound on Marlene's head and intones the healing.

“I thought we were supposed to have until sundown,” James says absently, staring at the edges of Gideon's wound that slowly stitch themselves together. Marlene's own wound itches as it heals and leaves behind half-dried blood.

Sirius looks up, catching the light from the torches all around, turned on just now after the sun's set. “So did I. He changed his mind.”

Marlene would ask why but the question itself remains in Sirius's voice. The others must sense it too because Gideon frowns down at the book in James's hands and says, “These are the same spells Aunt Lucretia had when she was healing me and Fab.”

“Are they,” Sirius answers without looking up, eyes now trained on his own scraped-up hand as he touches the tip of his wand to it. New skin blooms up across it and it's not until it's fully healed that he looks up at Gideon. Lucretia loved them both, her nephews, Marlene had years to see it. “You think I don't know the limits of my own magic?”

Gideon holds up his hand, waggling the misshapen fingers.

“Some appearances have to be kept.”

“You little –” Gideon starts as he jerks forward but James stops him with a hand on his chest and the sentence dies in his throat. “Fabian,” he continues instead but a booming sound far below, harsh enough to make the floor underneath their feet tremble, all the way down to the foundations, renders him silent again. Sirius sucks in a breath.

They exchange wide-eyed looks. The corridor they're in might be empty of actual Death Eaters but the rest of Hogwarts certainly isn't and they've allowed themselves to forget it. “The common rooms,” Dorcas says, pressing a hand over her collarbone. “Hardly could be anything else.”

Gideon runs a hand through his hair, all anger gone from his face, now white as a sheet. His oldest nephew, Marlene remembers, started at Hogwarts this past September. “Come on.”

They start down the corridor and get all the way to the top of the staircase before a silver streak shoots up before them, materialising into a silver cat. “They are retreating,” McGonagall's voice says, hurried but alive. “We are gathering in the Great Hall.”

When Marlene looks at Sirius, relief is trickling into the corners of his mouth, curving them up softly. He murmurs a quiet, thankful word. In the next moment, he's turned into a large dog that follows them down to the Entrance Hall, silent-footed and with eyes careful on their surroundings.

The Entrance Hall is half-ruined but by no means empty; there is a groaning woman caught beneath a pile of debris and a couple of students huddled over a shaking body. James and Gideon break off towards the woman and Dorcas toward the students, all murmuring their reassurances before they’re even within earshot.

Marlene goes to follow them but Sirius catches his teeth in her sleeve and pulls her into a small alcove behind the wreckage. He shifts back to himself and muffles their conversations to prying ears, then spins some sort of illusion that makes the world outside go all blurry. He rolls up his sleeve and shows her the Mark writhing across his skin, summoning him, demanding his presence by its master's side.

Marlene looks up at him, heart hammering its way into her throat. “You're joking. Sirius, you just attacked some of his most vicious soldiers. If they manage to make it back to him –”

“They won't.”

“But if they do –”

“They won't,” Sirius insists, just as stubborn as Marlene remembers him in this very building, just as infuriatingly confident in his abilities. He shrugs with one shoulder, a little helplessness cutting through the determination on his face. “What else do you expect me to do? Just walk into the Great Hall, full of people whose loved ones I tortured and killed?” At Marlene's wince and her pained expression, he adds, “Just a couple more hours, Mack. It hardly makes a difference.”

Except you might not survive this time.

“Sirius.” Marlene grabs onto his wrist, the digits of her fingers digging into the soft, blue-veined skin there, the proof of a life still bleeding beneath. At the point in her life when she thought she'd die it was him who kept her anchored to life, on his knees against everything that he was supposed to be standing for. It's her turn now. “You've done enough. Let go.”

Sirius shakes off her hand and covers the sides of her face with his warm and calloused hands. He blinks at her, slow and steady, familiar as childhood. He won’t listen and that’s familiar, too. “Don't let the others show the truth, okay? I might have some use yet.”

It's something about the set of his jaw and the rigidness of his shoulders, something about the line his eyes make and the way he doesn't fit. She thinks of the boy he was, raised between cold walls and loving warm despite it, and the man that he's become and the prints of himself he left behind, so harsh he ripped too much of his soul away, so much, too much –

“Sirius –”

But Sirius slips out of her reach and vanishes into the darkness drawn over the courtyard. His goodbye cuts itself into her ribcage.

Marlene steps out of the alcove, skin burning cold. Following him would be foolish at best and suicidal at worst. She tries to remind herself that he's been doing this for years, for longer than she's known about it. The thought is horrible but he's the only one that knows Voldemort well enough to outwit him. There’s nothing else she can do but let him go. She turns away.

In the defiant hum of the Great Hall, she sees the others at the very end of it, where the professors' table has been pushed back to form a sort of protective brace. Dorcas is leant over the dark-haired woman from the Entrance Hall while Gideon is talking to a faint-looking boy. James is off to the side, deep in conversation with Remus, oblivious to the way Remus is frowning at the book in his hands. Fierce relief crashes through Marlene at the sight of him, tawny hair ruffled and skin drained but without a scratch otherwise. He's safe, at least for the time being, which means that Harry and Lily, whom he was meant to accompany to the edge of the Apparition line, are probably okay, too. Now they only have to make it out of Hogwarts unscathed.

Between one blink and the next, a house-elf appears in front of the two of them. It takes Marlene a moment longer than Remus and James, both pulling out their wands, to establish that the house-elf means them no harm, judging by the way James’s face lights up and Remus’s eyebrows knit together in concern. Marlene quickens her step and arrives within earshot several seconds later, just in time to see James's mouth fall open again and hear him, with his voice on a breaking point, say, “My mother had something to do with it?”

“Something to do with what?” Marlene asks when she's close enough. Now that she is, she can see the house-elf, with big brown eyes and soft-looking ears, is none other than Linsy, the one James had to let go when they started moving around for Harry’s safety. She’s wringing her hands and gives Marlene an unsure bow.

Remus's head shoots up at the sound of her voice, the shock still very firmly in place on his face when he explains faintly, “Regulus sending Kreacher to tell Linsy to get Harry and Lily out of Hogwarts apparently.”

“Regulus Black?” she repeats incredulously. It shouldn't make sense, is the thing, but if Sirius got to Marlene in time why wouldn't he have got to his own brother, too? Or maybe – maybe Sirius isn't the one behind it this time and this is all about to go from bad to worse very, very quickly.

“I'm just as lost as you are.”

If they had time, Marlene could probably tell him all the different ways that sentence doesn't exactly track but they don't so she doesn't; besides, it might even be true at this moment.

“You can be lost after you tell Linsy here where Lily and Harry are, Mr Lupin,” McGonagall says as she strides up to them. One of her glasses' lenses is cracked but it does absolutely nothing to ease the severity of her piercing eyes as she measures them out. At the sight of her, Linsy's ears go flat along her head. “Mr Potter,” she continues as she turns to him, with absolutely no regard for the way Remus stares at her, “I believe that book would be better used with people actually doing any sort of healing.”

“Did you not hear the part about Regulus and Kreacher?” Remus asks with more doubt in McGonagall's judgement than Marlene would have dared to openly show.

“I very much did.” McGonagall straightens her glasses. “But I fail to see the importance of it when Linsy is here, completely devoted to saving her family.” She favours Linsy with a short smile that Linsy returns a little shyly.

A strangled sound escapes Remus. “Have you lot lost your mind?” he asks with wide eyes, voice rising a pitch. He points to James. “He asks me where's Sirius like that's something normal to do and you want me to give up life-threatening information to someone sent here by a man apparently risen from the dead after three years who was also a Death Eater the last time we heard of him. What is wrong with you?”

Marlene holds in a wince. Given how seriously Remus lacks any sort of context, the beginning and end of which they cannot afford to outline right now, it isn't strange he must think them all to be under Imperius or worse. But here's what's she's gleaned from his words: Lily and Harry aren't out of the woods yet, they are still somewhere here and in the light of everything, Linsy is probably the safest and quickest way to get them out. Now, Marlene isn't stupid enough to blindly have faith in the good intentions of Regulus Black but she does trust McGonagall.

Marlene points her wand at her. “When you came to visit me in the hospital, what did you make me promise?”

Without a second's hesitation, McGonagall says, “That you would tell no one what Sirius did.”

Marlene could have used a better memory for it but in the wake of recent events, it was the first one that resurfaced. She turns to Remus, willing him to understand by the sheer determination she puts in her words. “Remus, listen –”

The voice that cuts over her makes the entirety of the Great Hall flinch and turn around in search of it. “We have Harry Potter,” it says, the high, raspy pitch of it unmistakably Voldemort's. It surrounds them, getting their hearts into an ice-cold grip, no source to it, only bone-deep dread. “Those of you who wish to come kneel before me and accept my triumph will be received graciously. Those who still plan to oppose me will die where you stand.”

[brideofcthulhu10]

Ok I’m at work and I cannot stop thinking about a soulmate au with Dwayne (because he’s my fave) where a psychic or someone tells him that he’ll meet someone with like a specific tattoo or birthmark

Sure thing! Currently the child birth post is taking a lot longer than I expected, I’ve only just finished the David segment, I still have Paul, Marko and Dwayne to go but hopefully they’ll be done before Wednesday.

Dwayne’s Fate

Halloween rolled in and yet the plethora of tourists never seemed to cease. All over the boardwalk they flocked to every newly decorated attraction, sporting cheesy plastic masks, sharing caramel apples, hugging each other as they went into the haunted house... Dwayne couldn’t help but feel the sharp pang of envy overtaking him. The young native pushed his mess of windblown black hair from his face, utterly tuned out while Marko and Paul were scoping out the beach honeys clad in bikinis and shorts. Instead he leaned on the handlebars of his bike, watching the couples pass by. Eighty-One Years. 

He had been a vampire for eighty-one years. In all that time he’d never considered anything outside of his own pack, his coven of brothers who had become vampires alongside him. It was decades of wild nights! He thought he could never want anything else. But when Michael waltzed in and swept up Star and Laddie... he felt almost dark, in a sense. 

Something changed in him the night he came back. He wasn’t sure how. What mattered was that he, and his brothers were alive once again. Well, not alive, but still. Now he was back to terrorizing the night time streets of Santa Carla like he always had. Only, it wasn’t like always.  A part of him wished there was something more to all this. He had hoped one day to settle down when he was still alive but opportunity seemed to be almost gone by this point. Drumming his fingers on the handlebars of his bike, Dwayne grew increasingly impatient remaining in place. Swinging his leg over his bike he sighed with Marko turning to watch the road hog waltz away.

“Hey, Dwayne, where you headed, man,” he called, looking up. 

“For a walk. I can’t sit here all night like you suckers,” Dwayne retorted, stuffing his hands in his jacket pockets. Silently he wove through bustling crowds, barely lifting his eyes. Anyone who was in his warpath quickly learned to dodge him. Thoughts plagued his head, more than he had before to the point they were cluttering against each other. 

“You there,” a voice called over the unruly sounds of Santa Carla. Dwayne hadn’t thought much of it until an elderly woman quickly wove through. “You! You! Yes, wendigo-boy!”

The term gave him pause, looking back at the silver haired crone waddling his way still pointing her dried up finger until it was inches from his nose. “Yes, I could sense the aura of you and your friends across the way. Your dark presence is unmistakable.”

Dwayne swatted her hand away with a grimace, taking a step back. “Bug off you old bat, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he hissed, turning from her.

“Your past may not define your future! It is not too late to find one who can bring light to your darkness,” she insisted, running in front of him. 

Again Dwayne groaned, This broad was persistent. Even when he tried to walk away a third time she managed to swoop around him. 

She was easily in her late 80′s with wiry silver hair barely contained in a low hanging bun. Feathers stuck out of her hair, clanking armfuls of metal bangles rang whenever she moved her hands. Each boney finger cracked, dawning a ring on each that barely hung of aged flesh. Beady brown eyes practically stared into his center which made it impossible to to look at her face. Whenever she spoke he could see her crooked snaggle tooth accompanying her worn voice, raspy as if she had swallowed sandpaper. Wrapped around her burnt orange dress was a worn leather belt chipping away sporting a purple satin bag tied around it. Whatever it was she wanted to discuss was not going to wait. When his internal debate grew to be too much, she finally snatched him firmly by his wrist and began to pull him where she was determined to be. There was no point in questioning any of this, all she did was answer in stupid riddles.

"All will be answered! But you come with now, otherwise you will miss it! Then who knows when it'll happen again."

"It". Whatever this "it" was carried some weight as she used the term frequently. Although reasonably irritated, something in Dwayne felt the need to follow. He resisted the urge to rip her arm out of it’s socket, and instead rapidly shuffled his feet so he didn’t step over the hobbling broad who couldn’t be more than five feet tall- even when she wasn’t hunched over. The way she wove through tourists was eerily timed. Almost perfect. Nothing caught her off guard. Bobbing and weaving. Worst of all no one was moving, everyone around them seemed utterly oblivious to her presence! Pulling him forward she shuffled her way to a small caravan. The dusty old piece was barely illuminated by a single light hanging over the door, wedged between the old donut place and the Santa Carla Gift Shoppe.

 Still clutching his arm, they continued up creaking wooden steps that practically sang as he carried himself atop them. He can as convinced any moment this whole thing was going to collapse. The red door swung open slowly on it's own. Must've been rigged or something to do that. Meanwhile Dwayne had to duck just to avoid hitting the doorway, not that it mattered to the scatterbrained lunatic he decided to follow. Only when they were indoor did she finally release his hand and immediately shut her door behind him. It was decently bigger than what was let on initially. Tucked away behind a thick red curtain was a bed built around an arching stained glass window. It must've been somewhat decent before, athough this woman was such a hoarder you wouldn’t be able to tell at first. What books didn't fill her towering cases were strewn about the the floor in piles. Pages were stained with ink, notes written in old languages stuck to the walls between massive oil paintings depicting glorious battles, mystic creatures, ancient ones he had never seen. Plants were either hanging from the ceiling or over grown in corners. Dwayne made the mistake of sniffing at the strange red mushrooms poking out a dense pot of wriggling soil. He immediately recoiled watching worms surface just to burrow beneath the cakey mud. There were chattering cages hidden behind the bedroom curtain, ones he couldn't see into. Lined up along the wall was an oak desk draped in a velvet purple fabric coated in metallic gold zodiac symbols, completely covered end to end in bizarre herbs, animal parts, even live critters kept in an array of apothecary jars. Shelves held more, beakers of unrecognizable fluids bubbling over rickety bunsen burners. Thick crystals caked in dust jutted out beside a faded wooden box with bizarre pieces of jewelry spilling over, cobwebs gathering in untouched nooks. Rather than lamps or lanterns she had candles everywhere. Dribbling onto the floor, pouring over wrought iron candelabras, wiggling wisps of light spilling around the corners. By the kitchen space were cabinets sporting different colors of even more candles, many carved into with unfamiliar writings. When Dwayne picked up a dirty bottle covered in cobwebs off the crowded oak desk, there was a loud THWACK that made his ears wring.

“Ow! Hey-!”

Before he turned around she had a broom to his face and smacked him again. “No touching,” she demanded, yanking the bottle from him. 

“If I wanted to, I could kill you, you old hag,” he snarled, rapidly stepping towards her with fangs bared. Again, broom.

“Hush! You are not as your bothers are. You desire the knowledge, yes?! You shall not get a word if Alma is dead. No use then!”

Dwayne grumbled a sour huff, rubbing the top of his head. Again he questioned his personal sanity for humoring this hag wielding a mighty broom.

All the while the self proclaimed Alma shuffled around him, snatching up handfuls of bottles and plopping then atop another overcrowded table. Repeatedly she used the words "fool" and "knows nothing" clearly referring to him. Mostly because every time she said those words she'd look over her shoulder at him.

Black as night, her worn iron stove roared when she stoked the fire withing it's oven. Just atop the surface was a heavy black kettle nestled above a scalding red coil. It rattled and hissed, moaning when plumes of steam billowed out into the air. She mumbled and “harumph”ed her way through the caravan. Clanking down a tea set on a worn old silver tray she rapidly shuffled back to her stove to retrieve the screaming kettle still singing it's tune. Without missing a beat she dropped something inside it. It took two trembling hands she poured the water over the strange herbs she had previously retrieved into two cups. The dainty porcelain pieces were etched in golden, ancient writings atop another circular table covered by a deep blue table cloth. With that, she plunked herself atop a creaking old chair, staring at Dwayne with those beady eyes . 

‘Why the fuck am I still here with this old bat?’

Dwayne barely managed to fit in the rickety old seat that squeaked beneath his weight, staring down at the petit cup. The muddied liquid still bubbled, steam spiraling to carry an unbelievably sickening scent. Not necessarily horrible, but utterly confusing. The more he looked at it the more it seemed alive. “I am not touching that.”

“Hush! Nonsense! You shall drink as Alma does, and you will see.”

Dwayne hesitated, watching her sip at the herbal concoction. This was clearly the dumbest decison of his afterlife, but he had already died twice. What was there to be afraid of?

 “On the boardwalk.. you called me ‘wendigo’. What makes you say that?”

“I can see your true form,” she calmly explained, setting down the cup. The leaves barely floated at the base. If he turned his head he swore he could see it forming into the shape of a fanged jaw wide open. “Blood and flesh pave your future, but even those who dwell in darkness deserve a lantern to ease the suffering.”

So, she knew what they were. What he was. “Then why help me if you know I’m a vampire,” he questioned, expecting the tea to be brewed with holy water. 

“It is not my place to judge your path. I have come across many of your kind in my years of living. They all do what they must. So, drink.”

Dwayne hesitated once more, only to lift the beverage to his lips. It was bitter. The taste was reminiscent of biting into tree bark, all he could do is scrunch his nose. 

Then, Alma’s figure began to vibrate. He could see pieces of her breaking off, the room surrounding him peeling away, like old paint off a dirty wall. Strips crumbled to his feet. He attempted to move only to find himself firmly planted to his seat. There was nothing. No sound, no sight, only black. 

With a sharp inhale he opened his eyes to streams of orange. A... sunset?

Dwayne was amazed he could even remember what a sun set looked like. However, there was nothing that could take away the memory of the fire that filled the edges of the sky. Drips of night seeped in, miles of tall wheat grasses swaying in the breeze enveloping him. Still wedged in place he could only sit there, savoring a sight he would never see again.

But when he heard it, and he froze. A laugh. A twinkling bell chiming from far away. Flashes of E/C orbs flickered holding the sun within. A pearly smile whispering his name so softly it sent chills running down his spine. S/C as smooth as satin running a hand on his arm. The face cut in and out, but what he continued to see over and over was a symbol. An inky raven with wings draped over a woven dream catcher. Thick cords wove between each other into intricate details, each hole giving him pieces of who she was. Yes, she. He could hear her voice vibrate through the air. Not what it was saying, but only the sounds it made. “Alright alright, enough,” a raspy voice commanded. 

Dwayne finally jumped up and out of his chair, crashing back down to earth and only the dusty floor of Alma’s caravan practically wheezing for air. He felt like he had just been running for hours!

“Come, come let’s not be dramatic,” Alma snorted, shuffling over to take his tea over to her rusty old wash pan piled with dishes. 

It took a moment to get ahold of his bearings, swearing if he had a heartbeat right now it’d be jumping through his ribs. “What... the fuck... did you give me?!”

“No time for that, child. The bird is waiting for you just beyond the docks,” she began to babble again. Bird? Again that raven flashed before his eyes while Alma pried him off the floor. 

“Wait- but I don’t- will you quit shoving me?!”

Alma continued to yank him until he was out the door barely catching himself as they ran down the steps. “Oooh any minute, any minute. No time for dawdling!”

Quickly she took him by his arm and swung him back out into the crowd, stumbling into a young woman who nearly yelped.

“Oh shit are you okay,” she asked. A few girls giggled at him until she made a face, waving them off. “Sorry I didn’t see you there. Are you alright uh-?”

Just across her collarbone sat a raven tattoo nestled across her chest with winds spread over a dream catcher trailing into her shirt, the trickles of beads left hidden in her blouse. When he looked into those perfect E/C orbs holding the sunset beneath them he could only smile, setting her heart immediately ablaze. With a massive blush tinting her cheeks an adorable crimson hue she pulled him to his feet, unaware once he was standing that she still had not let go of his arm. Looking behind him Dwayne still expected to see the batty old woman sitting outside her caravan. Instead... there was no one in sight. No caravan either. Just an empty alleyway only sporting a few dented old trash bins overflowing with garbage. Slowly he turned back to the girl, positioning himself closer as his crisp smile beamed over cinnamon flesh.

“Well what’s your name first?”

“Y/N,” she spoke with a tender tone, pushing a lock of hair behind her ear.

“Y/N. I’m Dwayne. Nice to meet you, princess.”